Temperature rise may mean more wildfires

For the past 20 years, wildfires in western states have raged more often and more intensely, an alarming trend that has been blamed mostly on decades of aggressive fire suppression and century-old grazing and logging practices.

Recently, however, evidence has emerged that appears to show global warming also could be playing a significant role.

And computer models developed last year show that if the climate continues to warm, the risk of large wildfires in California could increase by more than 50 percent. In Northern California, they could nearly double in number.

The Bay Area, where neighborhoods are often on the edges of wooded areas, also could be threatened by more fires.

"The warmer it gets, the more forest fires you get, especially in Northern California," said Anthony Westerling, an environmental engineer and geographer at UC Merced who developed the models with a colleague.

"Some of the biggest increases were in the foothills of the Sierra and the Sierra themselves," he added.

Warmer temperatures mean earlier snowmelt, longer fire seasons and drier vegetation and soils.

In the summer, Westerling published a study in the journal Science that suggests a possible link between the increase in western wildfires and global warming.

The study found that large wildfires in western states increased "suddenly and dramatically" beginning in the late 1980s, and that the increases were largely driven by warming temperatures.

from the Contra Costa Times