Climate change will make wildfires worse, even in areas that don’t have wildfires today

Yet another destination known for its skiing and snowy winters will be forced to contend with growing wildfire severity and frequency.

The Alps, Europe’s largest mountain range and a world-renowned skiing destination, and the Alpine Foreland, a deep trough in southern Germany at the edge of the Alps, have both enjoyed minimal wildfire danger thanks to abundant winter snowfall and temperate summer conditions. But that will change by 2040.

A study published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) used climate models to forecast fire risk for the two locations and others from 1980 to 2099. Researcher Julia Miller used the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) as a fire danger indicator.

The research forecasted a likely increase in wildfire danger in temperate areas through the 21st century, with fire danger increasing to high even in regions where it is very low today. The results displayed a continual trend of worsening wildfire danger in the Alps and Alpine Foreland, with the climate change trend exceeding natural variability in the late 2040s. The excess would likely have happened earlier if not for the area’s current low wildfire danger.

These areas are expected to see what’s today considered a “100-year” fire event every 30 years by 2050 and every 10 years by the end of the century.

Severe debris flow in Ascona, Switzerland, in summer 1997, five months after a forest fire. Photo: Lorenza Re, Forest Service Canton Ticino
Severe debris flow in Ascona, Switzerland, in summer 1997, five months after a forest fire — photo ©1997 Lorenza Re, Forest Service Canton Ticino

“Alterations in these variables are projected to more than double the frequency of occurrence of extreme fire weather until the end of the 21st century … and increase the duration, severity, and spatial extent of fires,” Miller said. “Due to climate change, fire weather and hence the likelihood of fire events are projected to increase in several regions of the world – including historically less fire-prone areas – in the future.”

A study posted on PreventionWeb indicates that fires in the Alps will increase because of growing intensity of drought periods and heat waves — and the increasing fire hazard resulting from rural abandonment and more recreational activities.

Alpine communities, such as the previously mentioned Canadian community of Whistler, may see this as a hard pill to swallow. The lack of historical fires in the area means local people also lack an established “culture” for living with fires, according to Switzerland’s University of Bern. Researchers there are currently working to identify the wildfire risk awareness of communities throughout the canton of Bern and determine the best approaches for specific groups in the area.

“Based on scientific findings, the project aims to develop optimized and/or new communication strategies and materials for implementation,” the university said. “These can promote behavioral changes regarding forest fire risks, thus helping to prevent such fires.”

Humans are by far the main cause of wildfires

Every year in the U.S., billions of dollars are spent on wildfire suppression and risk reduction. The five federal fire agencies — Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Fish & Wildlife Service — spent a combined $4.4 billion (2021) and $3.5 billion (2022) in wildfire suppression alone, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). The USFS announced in February that it would be investing nearly $500 million more in its “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis” 10-year strategy focusing on 21 priority landscapes across the West.

Despite the numerous projects and strategies billions in taxpayer monies have funded, one thing hasn’t changed over the past decade: Humans are still the main cause of wildfires — and numbers have worsened since 2014.

Air quality publication HouseFresh analyzed NIFC data from 2023 and ranked the causes of wildfires by number of occurrences. Of the recorded fires, 72.6 percent were directly caused by humans.

The bulk of last year’s wildfires were caused by debris burning and open burning, resulting in 1,302 wildfires. That is an increase from the 1,120 fires started by debris and open burning in 2022. Equipment and vehicle use, power generation/transmission/distribution, and arson were the next listed causes of wildfires in 2023 at 507, 390, and 364 respectively.

“The balance between human and natural fires has almost reversed since 2014, although the trend has not been smooth,” the HouseFresh report said. “The proportion of human-caused wildfires grew significantly in 2015, 2016 and 2020, peaking at 77.2 percent in 2020.”

How People Start Wildfires
This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License ::: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

To no one’s surprise, California leads the nation in number of acres burned by wildfires. The state totaled 344,878 acres burned, followed by Alaska at 295,105 acres and Arizona at 218,286 acres. Arizona led the nation, however, in the biggest increase in acres from 147,553 acres in 2022 to 218,286 acres in 2023. Southeast Fairbanks County in Alaska was the leading county in acres burned in 2023 at 141,399 acres.

“Alaska suffered the second-most land damage in 2023, despite the largest annual reduction in acres — down 2,818,744 acres from 3,113,849 in the previous, record-breaking year,” the report says. “Unfortunately, many places where fires burn are hard to reach; at the same time, permafrost and surface fuels make Alaska’s wildfires particularly pollutive.”

~ The full report’s posted on the HouseFresh website.

Every year in the U.S., billions of dollars are spent on wildfire suppression and risk reduction. The five federal fire agencies — Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Fish & Wildlife Service — spent a combined $4.4 billion (2021) and $3.5 billion (2022) in wildfire suppression alone, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). The USFS announced in February that it would be investing nearly $500 million more in its “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis” 10-year strategy focusing on 21 priority landscapes across the West.

Canadian conservationists push emission limits for wildfire reduction

Groundbreaking research last year found around 37 percent of burned land across North America can be traced directly back to carbon emissions from 88 major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers. Now, environmentalists in Canada are using the research to push for change.

The study, published last May in the journal Environmental Research Letters, used climate, burned area, and global energy balance models to determine what contribution carbon emissions had on increases in vapor pressure deficit (VPD), which partially caused a rise in burned forest area in the United States and Canada. The research concluded, along with the fossil fuel link, that carbon producer emissions contributed to 48 percent of long-term VPD rise between 1901 and 2021.

canada smoke reaches Europe
Smoke from fires in Canada traversed the Atlantic Ocean and drifted over European countries including Portugal and Spain. ~ NASA image of the day for June 27, 2023

“As loss and damage from these hazards mounts, this research can inform public and legal dialogues regarding the responsibility carbon producers bear for addressing past, present, and future climate risks associated with fires and drought in the western U.S. and southwestern Canada,”  researchers said. Nearly a year later, Climate Action Network Canada advocates are using that research to advocate a new push for nationwide carbon emission limits.

June 26, 2023 Canada smoke
June 26, 2023 Canada smoke

“To cap wildfires and other climate impacts, the government must cap oil and gas emissions,” said Climate Action Network Executive Director Caroline Brouillette. “Other sectors and everyday Canadians are reducing their emissions, while for decades the oil and gas sector has increased its pollution and pushed back against every form of accountability. Further delay benefits only oil and gas executives’ pocketbooks and climate-denying politicians.”

A survey of nearly 2,000 Canadians found that nearly two-thirds of residents support a greenhouse gas emissions cap for the oil and gas industry. The survey also found that support for an emissions cap is the highest among Canadians aged 60 or older at 71 percent and only 18 percent of Canadians said the industries shouldn’t be required to limit emissions.

Such a cap would prevent 4,800 premature Canadian deaths and yield $45 billion in economic benefits, according to research projections from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. The results were attributed to projected reductions in air pollution — specifically in nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter, and annual ozone — if oil and gas industry emissions are capped at 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2023, which is Canada’s national climate target.

~ Full statement from Climate Action Network Canada.

 

 

Hit it hard and fast: not always best

A report published this week by researchers in Montana indicates that century-old policies to suppress wildfires as quickly as possible is actually contributing to more severe and larger fires over time. The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Communications, examines what the researchers call “suppression bias.”

They identify “suppression bias” as the consequences of knocking down low- and moderate-intensity fires: Other fires will burn hotter and scorch broader areas of forest and land, and people experience more of the most destructive fires, according to a story in the Daily Montanan. “Over a human lifespan, the modeled impacts of the suppression bias outweigh those from fuel accumulation or climate change alone. This suggests that suppression may exert a significant and underappreciated influence on patterns of fire globally,” lead author Mark Kreider, a doctoral candidate at the University of Montana, said. “By attempting to suppress all fires, we are bringing a more severe future to the present.”

On the other hand, the researchers said less suppression of lower-intensity fires might make firefighting easier in the future. Kreider authored the paper along with four other UM researchers and professors and an ecologist with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute in Missoula.

 The Big Knife Fire outside of Arlee, Montana, on the afternoon of Sunday, July 30, 2023. (Photo by Nicole Girten, Daily Montanan)
The Big Knife Fire outside of Arlee, Montana, on the afternoon of Sunday, July 30, 2023. (Photo by Nicole Girten, Daily Montanan)

They compare suppression bias when it comes to fire management to doctors overprescribing antibiotics. “In our attempt to eliminate all fires, we have only eliminated the less intense fires (that may best align with management objectives such as fuel reductions) and instead selected for primarily the most extreme events (suppression bias) and created higher fuel loads and more ‘suppression-resistant’ fires.”

The USFS estimates that 98 percent of wildfires are fully suppressed before they reach 100 acres in size – most of them within 72 hours. In Montana, fire managers try to contain fires as quickly as possible; Gov. Greg Gianforte said last year that crews kept 95 percent of fires in Montana to 10 acres or less in 2022.

Since the late 1800s and early 1900s, policies have largely focused on protecting timber and homes from burning.

Montana’s state fire policy, adopted in 2007, specifies that minimizing property and resource loss is the priority in fighting fire and is “generally accomplished through an aggressive and rapid initial attack effort.” The policy also says that forest management including thinning and prescribed fire improves forests and that inadequate practices to reduce interface risk  could jeopardize Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.

But as more development, particularly in the West, encroaches on the wildland/urban interface, a century of fire suppression and climate change has ballooned federal suppression costs from hundreds of millions a year in the 1990s to an average of $2.8 billion a year from 2018-2022 (NIFC data). Total annual acreage burned has doubled, on average, from what burned in the mid-1980s, and traditional fire seasons have increased by a month in duration, according to federal fire managers.

But the new research suggests that reducing suppression for low-intensity fires and allowing them to burn when conditions are good could mean that fire managers won’t face so many extreme fires in the future.

 A water scooper drops water on the Colt Fire in late July. (Photo courtesy Colt Fire Incident Management / Inciweb)
A Bridger Aerospace CL-215T scooper drops water on the Colt Fire in late July. (Photo courtesy Colt Fire Incident Management / Inciweb)

Last year, federal agencies updated the Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy to include more prescribed burns and more fuels treatments to reduce risk of wildfires and to better account for climate change when modeling future forecasts.

Philip Higuera, a co-author of the paper and a professor of fire ecology at UM, said it may seem counterintuitive, but the research shows that accepting that more wildfires should burn (when it’s safe) should be the main takeaway. “That’s as important as fuels reduction and addressing global warming,” he said.

 ~ Thanks and a tip of the hardhat to Dick for this one. 

FIRE history, northern Great Lakes

In the northwest portion of Lake Superior is a chunk of land of about 132,000 acres that is both a geographic novelty and an International Biosphere Reserve. The Isle Royale National Park is 56 miles off Michigan’s shore and 18 miles from Minnesota’s mainland. Congress designated the 50-mile-long island as a national park in 1931, but even before that it was apparent the island’s boreal forests had a close history with fire.

2021 Horne Fire

“Official fire record keeping began in 1847, when the first General Land Office survey of Isle Royale was conducted,” according to the park’s website. “These records show 31 fires between 1847 and 1898. Data suggests fire was more frequent and/or severe in the boreal forest of the island’s northeast end, compared with the northern hardwoods of the southwest end.”

The island’s dense concentration of high-flammability trees, e.g. balsam fir, black spruce, and jack pine, heightened the risk of wildfires igniting when lightning struck. A zoologist in 1931 recognized the important role fire played in the island’s unique ecosystem, but his ideas were discarded in favor of the system-wide preference toward fire suppression.

flammable species on Isle Royale
Flammable species on Isle Royale

“In planning for improvements and facilities on Isle Royale, the National Park Service consulted with University of Michigan Zoologist Adolph Murie,” the park said. “Murie visited Isle Royale in June 1935 and recommended that no new trails be cleared by the CCC and all efforts be made to ‘guard against any sort of development which will reduce space or increase travel.’ He also recommended that forest fires be allowed to occur on Isle Royale, but this idea was rejected, and instead, an aggressive anti-forest-fire point of view was adopted.”

Isle Royale map

Officials would soon come to regret dismissing Murie’s ideas. Park historians describe the summer of 1936 as hot and dry. Hundreds of CCC enrollees arrived at the heavily logged and mined island to establish the park. On July 25, a fire started near the Consolidated Paper Company and, while a cause was never determined, the “Fire of 1936” would have the most profound effect on the natural and human history of Isle Royale compared with any other historical event.

Around 200 CCC members and loggers tried in vain to fight the fire as it grew from 200 to 5,000 acres over 10 days. The fire was reported as contained on August 4, but two spot fires that had ignited on August 2 would become much larger problems. By August 18, the three fires burned 27,000 acres before they were officially declared out after heavy rainfall.

Multiple factors contributed to the high number of acres burned in the fire, park historians said. The island’s ground was, at the time, mostly covered in highly flammable mosses. In-fighting between the park system and CCC members, including a short CCC strike when tobacco supplies ran out, likely made matters worse.

SEAT on the Horne FireThe island wouldn’t see significant wildfires again until the 2021 Horne Fire and the 2022 Mount Franklin Fire, which burned 335 acres and 6 acres respectively. In the fires’ wake, scientists and researchers hope to use the burned areas to learn more about the dynamics between fire and the island’s life.

“The area may look different, but wildfire is an agent of necessary change,” the park said. “At the site of the Horne Fire, Isle Royale ecologists now have a living laboratory, and these researchers can begin to study the relationships between fire, living things, and an island environment.”

 

::: more about fire ecology research on the island :::

 

 

Record-breaking fires, COVID-19, and impacts on firefighters

It’s been four years since a near-perfect storm hit the U.S. West. COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, just months before the worst wildfire season in recorded history.

The interactions between wildfire and COVID-19 were large and sweeping, research in the years since has shown. The 2020 season left lasting impacts on the wildland firefighting force, both systemically and personally.

Wildland firefighters are at high risk for both COVID-19 infection and, when infected, experiencing severe illness from the virus, research published in the National Library of Medicine and Science academic journals found. Researchers in one study examined potential health and workforce capacity impacts by modeling the movement of suppression resources across the country over a season and the corresponding potential for disease spread and cascading outbreaks across wildfire incidents.

inbound and outbound firefighters on a Montana fire

The increased risk stems primarily from firefighters’ exposure to wildfire smoke, limited access to hygiene supplies, and constantly being physically near other wildland firefighters and the public.

IHC superintendents were surveyed by USFS researchers a year after the fires burned. At the beginning of the pandemic, the agency launched a wide range of new practices for hotshot crews to limit the spread of COVID-19 while also, it was hoped, improving operational efficiency. New practices included changes in pre-fire preparation, using virtual paperwork and briefings, and reformatting traditional fire camps to a more widespread layout. The USFS also created a COVID-19 Incident Risk Assessment Tool for fire managers; it measured numerous factors including camp size, mitigation techniques, and number of positive cases to estimate how at-risk each crew was.

The researchers wanted to know if superintendents were interested in maintaining any of those practices in daily hotshot crew use in the years after 2020, regardless of COVID-19. The survey found that the majority of practices contributed positively to operational efficiency in addition to crewmember safety and well-being. Most respondents preferred the ease of virtual vs. in-person paperwork and briefings, they liked having crews spike on or near the line with the full-scale ICP camp away from the fire, and they felt better physically and mentally as a result of these changes.

Wildland firefighter well-being — and proper pay — are still a major focus for the USFS post-2020 as retention becomes an increasingly worrying issue. Research conducted this year on retention found that highly skilled wildland firefighters with a high number of assigned days, payment of additional annual earnings, and gained experience throughout the firefighter’s career all had positive effects on retention. Local wages of alternative occupations in a firefighter’s local area had no significant effect on retention.

The future of wildland firefighter physical health may also see improvements thanks to technological developments stemming from COVID-19. Respiratory illnesses like coronavirus, and other long-term health risks firefighters face such as lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, may be seen in firefighters less and less as mobile respirators proceed further in development.

California fitted wildland firefighters with a mobile respirator prototype last October while they dug firelines or cut down trees with chainsaws. The results were mixed.

“Plenty broke. Hoses popped out of sockets. Straps snapped. Masks slid down sweating faces. Filters became dislodged,” Julie Johnson wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle.

During this event, firefighters from Cal Fire, L.A. County and the USFS took turns trying out several types of mask. They hiked down a slope and then back up, then pulled off their masks, sweating and breathing hard in triple-digit temps. Each round took only about ten minutes.

Firefighters shared their impressions with observers: Felt like a muzzle. Was too bulky. Too tight. It slipped off my face once I began to sweat.

Hearing one of her colleagues say “it’s better than nothing,” Cal Fire’s Sol Espinoza spoke up. “I’d rather take nothing,” she said.

The test is one of many completed or planned throughout the country as the fire agencies look to lower firefighter mortality from diseases increasingly found to be worsened through wildfire smoke inhalation. Experts have hedged their bets on technology frequently used to keep COVID-19 patients hospitalized with severe cases alive. Adaptations in the technology are still under development as researchers figure out which version might be best suited to meet the dynamic needs of firefighters in the field.

Espinoza, a firefighter with Cal Fire in San Bernardino. Espinoza said she could never imagine wearing a constrictive device that makes it harder to breathe.