Warming to Blame for Western Wildfires?
Q: Did climate change cause the wildfires out West?
A: Scientists say a hot and dry summer — conditions more likely in a warmer world — caused widespread wildfires in Western states. But land use changes also have played a role.
FULL ANSWER
As of early October, the National Interagency Fire Center reported that roughly 8.4 million acres — an area larger than Maryland — have burned across the U.S. this year. Just five Western states — Montana, Nevada, California, Idaho and Oregon — made up more than half of that acreage. Alaska and Texas, the country’s two largest states, also contributed hefty sums.
That does not include the tens of thousands of acres that have been lost this week in Northern California, where ongoing wildfires so far have killed 10 people and destroyed 1,500 structures.
One of our readers wrote to us about the wildfires in Oregon, saying that they are “NOT due to ‘climate change,’” but rather “directly caused by the ending of good sustainable timber harvests.” So, we thought we would lay out the evidence behind the cause of the fires in the West. Is climate change to blame? Or land management practices, such as timber harvesting? The answer is: It’s complicated.
Climate influences the occurrence of wildfires and so do land management decisions. But when it comes to the latter, it’s less about timber harvesting specifically and more about broad-scale land use changes that has occurred over the past two centuries.
Is This Fire Season Particularly Bad?
First, it’s worth putting this season into the context of the past. Kari Cobb, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center, told us by email that there are a few different ways to assess the severity of a particular fire season, such as acres burned or homes lost. The NIFC is a, including the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service.
