Wildfires In A Worsening Climate

The flame that burns everything green is getting closer and closer to us, reaching the most remote places, from Siberia to Patagonia. Each year, the risk with fires and fire seasons increases more since they tend to be more intense.

Previously, I have discussed the relationship that global warming has with forest fires. On this occasion, I want to give a perspective of how the world situation is regarding this.

The causes of forest fires are mainly two: global warming caused by environmental pollution and fires caused by humans. You should note that a clean world would also suffer from some natural fires, ruling out all human-caused consequences. But with the humans aport, the situation worsens to surprising high levels.

Global warming causes temperature conditions, dry and windy, favorable for initiate forest fires and their spread from fires to larger areas. Also, the wind, due to the low currents, did not favor the prompt extinguish of the fires.

Typically around March, the worst conditions are reported for weather-caused wildfires; however, if humans cause fires, this can vary. Higher temperatures dry out vegetation, making it easier to burn, predisposing vulnerable regions to more wildfires, mostly in the coming decades as temperatures continue to rise and rainfall leading to declining.

Image 1: The fire has remarked effects on the population (Image by USFS).

North America and Australia.

The incidents of the new era of wildfires for the United States probably begin in 2017 when the incidents were surprisingly high. This lapsus reports more damages than in the last added nine years.

As a result of increasingly dry vegetation, the National Interagency Fire Center recorded an increase in fire activity in the United States in March, especially in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions. "A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior," the National Weather Service said on its website.

Image 2 shows the "normal" behavior of the wildfire season in the United States. The principal risk months are April, May, June, and July, where most of the country is affected, including Alaska with its cold and wet weather.

Because of its world position, California naturally has wildfires; yet, the fire season in California and throughout the West begins earlier and ends later each year, increasing its duration by 75 days. Climate change is the cause. Warmer temperatures and reduced snow cover create long, dry, and intense seasons.

One of the most affected places has been California in the United States. 2017 was a very destructive wildfire season. Throughout this time, the fires destroyed or damaged more than 10,000 structures. In all, 9,133 fires burned 1,248,606 acres. 2018 was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season on record in California, with a total of more than 7,500 fires burning an area of ​​more than 1,670,000 acres, killing at least 85 people and destroying more than 18,000 structures. In comparison, 2019 was a relatively mild fire season; 7,860 fires burned a total of 259,823 acres. 

The 2020 California wildfire season was devasting, reaching new record measures because of this year of wildfires across California. Nearly 10,000 fires had burned over 4.2 million acres, damaging 10,488 structures and causing 33 fatalities.

Image 2: Wildfire season in America.

The pandemic appears to have caused a reduction in wildfires in Canada. The national fire-fighting readiness level generally only went up to level 3, unlike in 2017 and 2018, where readiness reached level 5 in summer.

Additionally, large-scale fire bans and restrictions appear to have worked. However, Quebec experienced one of its most active fire seasons in a decade, with 674 fires and a total area of 68,768 hectares burned. The 10-year average of Quebe is 461 fires and 235,767 hectares. Other regions also had many fires, although the total number of fires and the area burned in most zones were much lower than in previous years.

Australia has closed the quietest fire season in a decade; it was the coldest and wettest summer in years, unlike the wildfires that set large swaths of the country ablaze in 2019 and 2020 that caused global concern, the fire service said.

In 2021, the wildfire season in Australia burnt only 31,000 hectares (76,600 acres) of land burned statewide, compared to 5.5 million hectares (13.6 million acres) during the last wildfires of the season. It is even called "The Black Summer" by population.

The last wildfire season in Australia started in June 2019 and continued for an entire year. According to the Australian Parliament, fires were widespread at an extreme in 2019, killing at least 33 people and destroying more than 3,000 homes across the country, a number that is very low compared to previous years.

Australians on the east coast were inundated by rains and the worst flooding in more than half a century, with tens of thousands of people evacuated.

Additionally, the environmental damage has been substantial, more than a billion animals died, and many species are on the verge of extinction due to the impact.

Rest of the world

The year 2020 was a critical period for many territories; even the Arctic had fire episodes; the burned area was the size of Belgium, which is very worrying due to the Russian city of Verkhoyansk. The problem is very worrying because this area must be cold and even have ice most of the year. However, it is reaching temperatures above 30 ° C in summer.

In Indonesia, there are many fires, but they are not caused by nature but by humans and agricultural activities. The climatic conditions play very little in these humid tropical environments since they do not favor fires. Indonesian forests are burning because of the economic needs of the population. People have been chopping down trees and starting fires to take over the land.

The Brazilian Amazon suffered the worst reported impact in 13 years on the damage. I discuss other damages and effects caused by environmental pollution in another previous article.

Image 3: In the forests, the fires forced animal inhabitants to flee or die. Smoke harms the health of many animals and plants.

In Argentina, Patagonia has suffered a fire that the media has described as “Impossible“, damaging many forest zones, houses, means of production, and indigenous culture. On the other hand, a revealing comment from an informal activist: As environmental activist; Pablo Palacio Lada says on Twitter: "All fire is political. Apart from the strong suspicion of intentionality, it is the apathy of a useless government that only thinks of setting up mega-mining, keeping the province in conditions of abject poverty."

Several areas of central Asia also report an increase in fires. Although, this is milder due to the altitude of these places. In Nepal, reports show large fires affecting beautiful nature have also. In neighboring countries like India, there is also a heat-scorching wave.

Reports from Europe show that more than 400,000 hectares of natural land were unusually burned by forest fires, including many natural protection reservoirs. Romania (73,444 ha of burned area) was the country with the most damage to its protected areas in 2019, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS); Spain, Portugal, and Poland also register the highest number of fires in the EU countries in 2019;

Forest fires considerably affect Europe protected natural areas in 2019, with 159,585 ha, almost half of the total area burned in the EU occurred within these key biodiversity zones. The 2019 season was, however, one of the best in terms of accident prevention and loss of life; there were only three casualties.

The time to fix climate change and environmental pollution is now; as the years go by, the situation worsens. Very nocive effects are already happening in the world. The fact that implies natural fires occur in the polar zones could link irreversible destruction to environmental health.

References

• CNN. Reuters. Australia marks the quietest fire season in a decade. April 1, 2021. Link https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/31/australia/australia-fire-season-2021-intl-hnk/index.html.

• NBC. Alicia Victoria Lozano. Western states brace for 'very active wildfire season' following warm, dry winter.  April 2, 2021, 6:02 PM -05. Link https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/western-states-brace-very-active-wildfire-season-following-warm-dry-n1262946.

• New York Times. Veronica Penney. It’s Not Just the West. These Places Are Also On Fire.  Sept. 16, 2020. Link https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/climate/wildfires-globally.html.

• CNN. Jessie Yeung and Pedram Javaheri. Smog blankets Nepal as hundreds of wildfires rage nationwide. March 30, 2021. Link https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/30/asia/nepal-wildfires-air-quality-intl-hnk/index.html.

• Natural Resources Canada. National Wildland Fire Situation Report. June 2, 2021. Link https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/report.

• Open Democracy. Saskia Fischer, Manuela Zechner. Patagonia is burning: the politics of fire.  24 March 2021, 3.13pm. Link https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/patagonia-argentina-mining-indigenous-politics-fire/.

• The Guardian. Pablo Gutiérrez, Ashley Kirk, Jonathan Watts, and Frank Hulley-Jones. How fires have spread to previously untouched parts of the world. Fri 19 Feb 2021 09.26 GMT. Link https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/feb/19/how-fires-have-spread-to-previously-untouched-parts-of-the-world. Link https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/feb/19/how-fires-have-spread-to-previously-untouched-parts-of-the-world.

• Commission report: Europe's nature under threat as the world suffers worst year on record for forest fires – European Commission. The European Commission's science and knowledge service Oct 30, 2020. Link https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/forest-fires-threaten-europe-s-nature-world-suffers-worst-year-record.