Wildfire Today

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Wildfire Today

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Russia declares multiple states of emergency as wildfires threaten thousands, government inaction continues

Author Hunter BasslerPosted on Categories WildfireTags , , , 8 Comments on Russia declares multiple states of emergency as wildfires threaten thousands, government inaction continues

Multiple wildfires across Russia have caused officials to issue multiple states of emergency and evacuate thousands, while government officials are accused of largely ignoring the problem.

The latest state of emergency was issued by Novorossiysk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko on July 14, according to the Kyiv Independent. The city in southern Russia was forced to evacuate around 500 people from the fire that burned at least 153 acres as of July 15. More than 300 people, including workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry, were fighting the fire.

Two other regions declared wildfire-driven states of emergency at the beginning of July,  a Reuters article reported. The Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, declared a federal state of emergency for wildfires on July 1. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reported more than 107 registered wildfires burned more than 331,000 hectares (~818,000 acres) in the region.

The governor of the remote Siberian region of Tuva made the declaration on the same day as Sakha after a wildfire burned around 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) driven by intense heat, strong winds, and dry thunderstorms.

“At the moment, 23 forest fires have been registered on the territory of the republic,” said Vladislav Khovalyg, head of the Tuva region. “Most of them are in inaccessible mountainous areas. July as a whole promises to be the most difficult month in terms of the fire situation, and we have to fight for every hectare of forest.”

Experts warned that the nation was unprepared for an alarming wildfire season. The Moscow Times reported that limited state capacity for fire prevention and control, along with ongoing dry grass burning practices, worried experts of the potential for the season to turn into an annual crisis.

The “official indifference” was seen in real-time during the Siberia wildfires, which have burned an area the size of Normandy since the beginning of the year, French newspaper Le Monde reported. While the Russian government is preoccupied with its incursion into Ukraine, officials are neglecting necessary resources to fight wildfires burning throughout the nation.

“The problem is not just in the forest and its poor management,” an Irkutsk resident told Le Monde. “It’s largely in the heads of the people and the authorities, who don’t want to see it or fight it.”

The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reported more than 107 registered wildfires burned more than 331,000 hectares (~818,000 acres) in the region.

Russia’s wildfire problem is exacerbated by Earth’s changing climate. Recent research has shown wildfires will worsen in the coming years, even in areas where wildfires are currently rare, such as Russia’s alpine regions. Smoke from the worsening wildfires, e.g. in Siberia, is projected to cause thousands of deaths and billions in costs for East Asia.

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

The colors on the Russian Hydrometeorological Center’s map below represent the number of days of predicted “high” and “extreme” fire danger in April, according to the Moscow Times. The purple indicates less than one day, the yellow between one and three days, pink between four and six days, red between seven and nine days, and dark red over ten days.

Russian fire map
Russian fire map

Soaring Himalayan wildfires don’t have only climate change to blame

Author Hunter BasslerPosted on Categories WildfireTags , ,

Nepal has already seen 5,000 wildfires in 2024, the second-most wildfires recorded in a single year since record-keeping began in 2002. The fires have killed more than 100 people and have for days engulfed Kathmandu in hazardous wildfire smog.

“There is no respite from fires — both forest fires and house fires — continue to wreak havoc across the country in recent days,” the Kathmandu Post reported in April. “Massive fires have been raging across hectares of forest lands in more than a dozen places.”

Smoke from fires in Nepal -- NASA photo
A satellite fire map by NASA shows fire hotspots dotted across the bottom of the Himalayas, with a few creeping up the mountains. Image acquired by one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites on March 28, showing the region near Kathmandu engulfed in smoke.

The newfound prevalence of wildfires in the country has spiked researchers’ interest. A study published in the Climate Change scientific journal in 2023 analyzed the aftermath of 2021, Nepal’s worst wildfire year on record with 6,300 wildfires.

“In spring 2021, Nepal underwent a record wildfire season in which active fires were detected at a rate 10 times greater than the 2002–2020 average,” the study reported. “Prior to these major wildfire events, the country experienced a prolonged precipitation deficit and extreme drought during the post-monsoon period.”

Researchers concluded that both climate variability and climate change-induced severe drought played a factor in the country’s explosive wildfire growth. However, an environmental scientist stationed in Kathmandu recently told the Nature scientific journal that the study didn’t tell the full story.

Uttam Babu Shrestha, stationed at Kathmandu’s Global Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, told Nature a large cause of increasing wildfires is the deterioration of Nepal’s relationship with its forests. A 1979 World Bank report warned that the nation was nearing an “ecological disaster” as a result of the country’s widespread deforestation and heavy reliance on agriculture. Nepal’s government listened and decentralized the management of its forests, resulting in the country’s forest cover nearly doubling in three decades. The abolition of the country’s monarchy and transition to a federal system, however, left forest management by the wayside.

“But this new political atmosphere didn’t prioritize the management of community forests like before,” Shrestha said. “With no clear benefits coming out of forests, the locals don’t feel the same ownership.”

A proposal to lessen both wildfire severity and forest management inaction was proposed by the lead researcher of the 2023 study. Binod Pokhrel, a climate scientist at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, found that Nepal’s 282 weather stations could work together to inform community members.

“By using weather station data, we could precisely forecast drought index up to a local ward level,” Pokhrel told Nature. “The lack of management of increasing forest cover can easily lead to another disaster.”

Pokhrel proposed that a smartphone-based fire forecast would reduce the chance of fires getting out of control — and save lives. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development uses a similar idea to update its wildfire-monitoring webpage, but Pokhrel told Nature that the Nepalese government must be involved to safeguard against future disastrous wildfires.

Fires burn more tree cover every year due to climate change

Author Hunter BasslerPosted on Categories ResearchTags , 5 Comments on Fires burn more tree cover every year due to climate change

A new report has confirmed what forest managers have been warning the public about for years: Forest fires are becoming more widespread thanks to climate change.

The report, created by researchers at the University of Maryland, broke down global satellite data and found wildfires were the cause of 26 to 29 percent of global forest loss between 2001 and 2019. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), further analyzes the researchers’ maps  to estimate just how many more acres of forests were lost to fires compared with two decades ago.

“We calculated that forest fires now result in 3 million more hectares (~7.4 million acres) of tree cover loss per year compared with 2001 … and accounted for more than one-quarter of all tree cover loss over the past 20 years,” OCHA said.

Worldwide forest loss

The researchers also reported that 70 percent of the tree cover lost to fires occurred in boreal forests, with fire-related tree loss increasing 3 percent every year since 2001. The cause of the increase was northern high-latitude areas warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet, contributing to longer fire seasons.

Worldwide forest lossTree cover loss from fires in tropical regions also increased by 5 percent per year since 2001, resulting in roughly 15 percent of global tree cover loss from fire over the 20-year period. The loss was reportedly worsened by increasing forest degradation attributed to deforestation and agriculture expansion.

“There is no solution for bringing fire activity back down to historical levels without drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and breaking the fire-climate feedback loop,” OCHA said in response to the report. “Improving forest resilience by ending deforestation and forest degradation is key to preventing future fires.”

The full report is [HERE].



Burning Hot: 50 Years of U.S. Fire Weather

Author Kelly AnderssonPosted on Categories ResearchTags , , 8 Comments on Burning Hot: 50 Years of U.S. Fire Weather

Climate Central has examined historical trends in fire weather — a combination of low humidity, high heat, and strong winds — across the U.S., using data from 476 weather stations to assess trends in 245 climate divisions spanning all 48 contiguous states over a 50-year period from 1973 to 2022.

Wildfire seasons have become longer and more intense, especially across the West, and the research also found that many parts of the East have experienced smaller but important increases in fire weather. Even small increases in the East — with almost 28 million homes in fire-prone areas — puts millions more people at increased risk. As the research intro points out, the same weather variables that influence fire weather and wildfire are factors that determine the safe use of prescribed fire, critical to reducing fuels and thus fire risk. More fire weather days means fewer windows for prescribed burning.

fire weather

The reports include both summaries and in-depth comparisons of Fifty Years of Fire Weather in the West (example: Some places, including parts of Texas, California, Oregon, and Washington, are experiencing fire weather more than twice as often now as in the early 1970s) and Fifty Years of Fire Weather in the East (example: New England has experienced a decrease in annual fire weather days, driven largely by fewer days in which the wind speed variable hit the analytical threshold). Reduced wind speeds could be partially attributed to a decrease in the temperature gradient between land and sea along the Gulf of Maine, as sea surface temperatures have warmed drastically due to climate change.

Climate Central’s new report, Wildfire Weather: Analyzing the 50-year shift across America, expands on wildfire risks and adaptation across the country. The full report discusses other key factors that influence wildfire, including fuels, other weather conditions, and human activity.

Earlier, warmer spring ramps up Eastern Area fire season

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories WildfireTags , ,

The Jimmy’s Waterhole Fire in New Jersey was declared 100% contained on Thursday by the New Jersey Department of Forestry, having burned some 3900 acres, nearly half the state’s annual average in two days.

This and other regional fires prompts a visit to the Eastern Area Fire Environment Outlook to explore the conditions that led to the late April fire bust. On Friday’s Morning Briefing, the Eastern Area Coordination Center had nearly 40 percent of reporting units in Very High to Extreme Fire Danger, with the largest fires in New Jersey, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Rhode Island. In the past week, the region recorded 349 fires for 12,600 acres.

While spring is often active in the east — as forest fuels dry out between winter snow and rains and prior to green up —  the last week was drier throughout the Northeast and Midwest, as well as in the Great Plains and Southwest. Look south and you can spot the focused and incredible “purple” deluge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and to the north there’s an unusual heart-shaped moisture pattern in Michigan.

7-Day Percent of Normal Precipitation through April 14, 2023.

Spring in much of the East and Midwest was also warmer than normal …

… resulting in a 10-20 day earlier start to spring in the South and East, per the National Phenology Network. At least one location in New Jersey was tracked at 27 days early.

Fire activity in the region has been moving northeast toward Maine with the bubble of heat, including a fire point seemingly in the Atlantic — though a closer look at the Fire Weather Dashboard (with fire points activated) places the the fire on Martha’s Vineyard.

Soon, though, the spring fire season will be taking a hiatus, with greenup, increasing humidity, and even fog on the way. By Monday, moisture is expected in the East, with most predictive service areas transitioning to “Little or no risk.”

County commissioner in Glenwood Springs wants “climate” removed from wildfire agreement

Author Kelly AnderssonPosted on Categories Uncategorized, WildfireTags , , 9 Comments on County commissioner in Glenwood Springs wants “climate” removed from wildfire agreement

Garfield County in west-central Colorado signed off this week on the new multi-agency Roaring Fork Wildfire Collaborative, but not without a little creative editing. The Post Independent reported that county commissioners signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) joining 17 other local governments, fire districts, and state and federal agencies in the formation of the wildfire collaborative.

“The Roaring Fork Valley presents especially complex boundaries with the sheer number of agencies involved,” said Larry Sandoval with the BLM’s Colorado River Valley Field Office. He said the completion of this MOU is a major step toward effective collaboration in fire prevention and management.

The request for edits to the MOU originated with Garfield County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky. “A lot of the emphasis is coming from Pitkin and Eagle counties and the Forest Service to do more forest management,” he said, “which from my perspective is more than just prescribed burns.” Jankovsky wanted the MOU to include equal mention of logging, thinning, and other “more aggressive” forest management methods. “I find it ironic that this group talks about climate change, yet they look at forest management as burning the forest, which has the same effect as if we have a forest fire, just to a much smaller degree,” Jankovsky explained.

A third-generation native Coloradan, Jankovsky is serving his third term as Garfield County Commissioner. He is the public lands planning lead for the Board of County Commissioners and the former general manager of Sunlight Mountain Resort in Glenwood Springs. He asked that the word “climate” be removed from one sentence in the MOU where it stated that active management “… includes the use of the best available climate science that will help stakeholders understand how a changing climate will impact our landscapes and ecosystems, while also looking for opportunities to improve understanding through local research.” Jankovsky wanted the line to read “best available science” and not “best available climate science.”

Fire photo by Colorado State Forest Service
Fire photo by Colorado State Forest Service

Because fires have no boundaries and don’t recognize jurisdiction lines, the valley-wide collaborative is meant to have everyone on the same page. The 18 local, county, state, and federal agencies involved in wildfire management formalized their working relationship through the Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative; the Gunnison Times reported that talk of the collaborative started early 2022, when residents in the Roaring Fork River drainage discussed their interest in better fuels treatment. With several big fires in recent memory — the 2018 Lake Christine Fire, the 2020 Grizzly Creek Fire, and the 2021 Sylvan Lake Fire — valley stakeholders began discussing solutions. The collaborative’s goals include improving communication and identifying critical areas of fuels reduction and vegetation treatment.

Signatories to the MOU are Aspen, Snowmass Village, Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, and Marble. County signatories are Pitkin, Eagle, Garfield, and Gunnison counties. Additional collaborators include Aspen Fire, Roaring Fork Fire and Rescue, Carbondale Fire, Glenwood Springs Fire, the U.S. Forest Service, and the BLM.

The 2002 Hayman Fire was the largest wildfire in Colorado state history for nearly 20 years, until the Pine Gulch Fire surpassed it in August 2020. The Cameron Peak Fire became the largest wildfire in Colorado history seven weeks later at 206,667 acres. With multiple record-breaking fires, the 2020 Colorado wildfire season became the largest in state history after burning 665,454 acres.

Large-scale wildfires are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. as climate change accelerates; since 2000 an annual average of 70,072 wildfires have burned an annual average of 7 million acres across the country. According to research by the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University, that’s more than double the annual average of 3.3 million acres burned in the 1990s, when a greater number of fires occurred annually. A 2016 study found that climate change had doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western U.S., and a 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire weather each season.