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Sierra Nevada climate changes feed monster, forest-devouring fires

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 7:23 am

From the Sacramento Bee:

Driving home from Lake Tahoe, Leah Wills watched the column of ash-gray smoke from the Moonlight fire grow and grow – until finally she was under it. Overhead, the sky that September afternoon in 2007 turned eerie pink. Orange-red flecks of burning bark streaked like missiles through the air. And the smoke – eye-watering and acrid – was inescapable.

“It was like a nuclear cloud,” said Wills, 59, a policy analyst for the Plumas County Flood Control District who lives near the tiny hamlet of Genesee. “I’ve been to Denali and Kilimanjaro. I grew up with tornadoes. I’ve seen some big things. I never saw anything that big in my life.”

Wildfire has marched across the West for centuries. But no longer are major conflagrations fueled simply by heavy brush and timber. Now climate change is stoking the flames higher and hotter, too.

That view, common among firefighters, is reflected in new studies that tie changing patterns of heat and moisture in the western United States to an unprecedented rash of costly and destructive wildfires.

Among other things, researchers have found the frequency of wildfire increased fourfold – and the terrain burned expanded sixfold – as summers grew longer and hotter over the past two decades.

Read the rest of this comprehensive article from the Sacramento Bee by clicking here.

November 30, 2008 · Filed Under Climate change & water supply

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