Climate change is no longer a background factor in US wildfires. It is now the main driver.
A major new Harvard study finds that rising temperatures and drying landscapes caused by climate change are responsible for the majority of wildfire damage and smoke across the western United States over the past three decades.
Researchers conclude that climate change accounts for between 60% and 82% of the total area burned in western US forests since the early 1990s.
In California the figure is around 33% with the national average sitting at 65% of all wildfire emissions between 1997 and 2020.
The health impact is just as stark. Nearly half of the most dangerous wildfire smoke pollution in the western US can now be directly linked to climate change.
That pollution is PM2.5 fine particulate matter small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream. Between 2010 and 2020 climate change drove 58% of the increase in this toxic smoke across the region.
The study combines real world observations machine learning and large climate models to isolate the climate signal from other factors. It shows how hotter drier conditions have fundamentally altered wildfire behaviour since the 1990s.
The findings also expose a troubling reversal in air quality trends.
Pollution from factories and vehicles fell by around 44% between 1997 and 2020 thanks to clean air laws. Wildfire smoke moved sharply in the opposite direction.
Northern California and parts of Oregon Washington and Idaho were hit hardest. In those areas climate driven wildfire smoke made up between 44% and 66% of all PM2.5 pollution in the last decade.
The researchers warn this is not just a climate story but a land management one too.
Decades of fire suppression have left forests denser and more fuel loaded making climate impacts even worse.
Climate change link with wildfires appeared first on Energy Live News.