Now we see the next result in California of climate change: wildfires. NewScientist (30 July 2016) reports:
“For this time of year, it’s the most extreme fire behaviour I’ve seen in my 32-year career,” county fire chief Daryl Osby said. More than 10,000 homes had been evacuated as New Scientist went to press. A sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures also had to evacuate most of its animals, including Bengal tigers and a mountain lion.
California is going through its worst drought on record, and melting snowpack in the Sierra Nevada may mean even less water will be available in coming years. At least one study has linked the drought to climate change, and we know that global warming is expected to fuel more wildfires in the future. The heat from the wildfires could also be releasing carbon stored in permafrost, fuelling further warming.
We examined the lack of ice pack in the Sierras in this post a while back. An analysis of California wildfires 1984-2010 is here:
In this update, we use satellite-derived estimates of fire severity from the three most widely distributed SNFPA forest types to examine the trend in percent high severity and high severity fire area for all wildfires ≥80 ha that occurred during the 1984 to 2010 period. Time-series regression modeling indicates that the percentage of total high severity per year for a combination of yellow pine (ponderosa pine [Pinus ponderosa Lawson & C. Lawson] or Jeffrey pine [P. jeffreyi Balf.]) and mixed-conifer forests increased significantly over the 27-year period. The annual area of high-severity fire also increased significantly in yellow pine-mixed-conifer forests. The percentage of high severity in fires ≥400 ha burning in yellow pine-mixed-conifer forests was significantly higher than in fires <400 ha. Additionally, the number of fires ≥400 ha significantly increased over the 1950 to 2010 period. There were no significant trends in red fir (Abies magnifica A. Murray bis) forests. These results confirm and expand our earlier published results for a shorter 21-year period.
NASA provides a satellite view of some of the fires:
Credits: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team
You can see the smoke of the first on the coast.
