As fires sweep through the hills outside Los Angeles, the question arises: Are wildfires with us for the foreseeable future? In this post, What a 1-Degree Temperature Increase Means for Wildfires, Tom Kenworthy of the Center for American Progress says yes, due to climate change. “Inaction,” he notes, “will cost the western United States dearly.”
He sites two papers, one from the non-profit Headwaters Institute in Bozeman, Montana. It found that a 1-degree rise in spring and summer temperatures “will increase the area burned by seasonal fires in Montana by more than 300% and more than double the cost of protecting homes threatened by fire.”
He also cites a study by Harvard University researchers, which predicted a 50% increase in wildfires in the West by 2050 (measured by area). They may rise 75-175% in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains. That figures comes from “computer models calculating impacts of moderate global warming on western U.S. wildfire patterns and atmospheric chemistry.”
Since 2000, wildland fires in the United States have burned an average of more than 7 million acres a year, about double the average acreage for the previous four decades, Kenworthy writes. Given patterns of development, especially of homes in wooded areas, there’s no reason to expect any moderation.
Graphic from Harvard Researchers, Rising Fire Risk by 2050