Tag: climate change

Wildfire briefing, March 6, 2014

Minnesota fire chief pleads guilty to arson

The chief of the St. Louis County volunteer fire department in Minnesota resigned after investigators charged him with arson last December. On Friday, Ryan Scharber, 30, pleaded guilty to setting a fire on U.S. Forest Service land and to one count of attempted arson. Below is an excerpt from an article in the Daily Mail:

…According to documents filed in federal court in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Dunne is requesting that Scharber should be given the maximum five-year sentence, reports the Star Tribune. In the memorandum, Dunne disputed Scharber’s contention that he had set the fires ‘to get out of the house for a few hours to get relief from his newborn child’s acid reflux.’ The prosecutor noted that Scharber hadn’t offered that excuse during the five-hour interview with investigators in which he eventually confessed on December 19, 2012. ‘The psychiatrist at the Range Mental Health Center diagnosed the defendant with pyromania,’ Dunne wrote. ‘The real reason behind the defendant’s criminal conduct in this case was that diagnosis.’

New government report describes possible ‘cascading system failures’ caused by climate change

About 240 authors and a 60-person Federal Advisory Committee (The “National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee”) have developed a draft climate report. The lengthy document warns that climate-fueled storms, flooding and droughts could cause “cascading system failures” unless there are changes made to minimize those effects. One of the dozens of topics covered in the report was “Forestry”. You can read that section of the report HERE. Below is a brief summary of that section.

Climate change is increasing the vulnerability of forests to ecosystem change and tree mortality through fire, insect infestations, drought, and disease outbreaks. Western U.S. forests are particularly vulnerable to increased wildfire and insect outbreaks; eastern forests have smaller disturbances but could be more sensitive to periodic drought.

Pigeon sets fire to a building in London

A pigeon is being blamed for starting a fire on the roof of a flat in London. Firefighters believe the bird dropped a lit cigarette into its nest on the roof of the building, starting a fire that forced the nine residents to evacuate the structure. Four fire engines and 21 firefighters were able to save the flat, but the roof was damaged. No one had been on the roof in a long time and there was no electrical equipment in the area, but neighbors told firefighters they had often seen birds flying in and out of a hole in the roof.

Other cases of animal arson

This is not the first time we have run a story on a bird setting fire to a building. It also happened in 2009, again in the United Kingdom, when a sparrow was accused of picking up a lit cigarette and, like the pigeon, depositing it among the dry twigs and grass in its nest. We have a whole series of articles tagged “animal arson”.

Thanks and a hat tip go out to Preston

A “Climate Change and Wildfire” research paper that you can’t read

Federal employees working for the United States Forest Service and the citizens of the United States have published the results of research done on behalf of the taxpayers, titled Climate Change and Wildfire. If you want to read it you will have to pay $35.95 to the for-profit Elsevier corporation headquartered in the Netherlands that published the paper. It was written by research meteorologists Yongqiang Liu and Scott Goodrick from the Forest Service’s Southern Research Station (SRS) and Warren Heilman from the Northern Research Station. The concept of Open Access to taxpayer-funded research still has a long way to go in the U.S. Forest Service.

Below are some highlights of the research, according to the USDA Forest Service’s Southern Research Station. We will have to take their word for it. The agency suggests that “for the full text of the article” go to the Elsevier web site, where you have to pay $35.95.

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(UPDATE at 11:44 a.m. MST, February 24, 2014)

After we reached out to her and left a message, we received a phone call today from Zoë Hoyle, the author of the press release about the research that was issued May 20, 2013. She said the link to the full text of the article which directed web site visitors to the pay wall was an error. She said the usual practice of USFS researchers is to place their results on http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/ where they can be read at no charge, but that still has not taken place. Ms. Hoyle said, however, that the paper should be on treesearch by the end of this week.

In the meantime, one of our readers, Liz H., used Google Scholar to find a copy of it at firescience.gov. Thanks Liz.

And thanks go out also to Ms. Hoyle for correcting the oversight. We are pleased to hear that the usual practice of the USFS is to publish their research on treesearch, an open access format on the internet.

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(UPDATE at 1:54 p.m. MST, February 24, 2014)

Ms. Hoyle contacted us again to let us know that the USFS was able to expedite the placement of the research paper on treesearch, where it can now be viewed without having to pay the company from the Netherlands $35.95.

Here is one of the illustrations from the paper, about the interactions between the climate and fire.

Below is an excerpt from the May 20, 2013 USFS news release about the research.

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“While research has historically focused on fire-weather interactions, there is increasing attention paid to fire-climate interactions,” says Liu, lead author and team leader with the SRS Center for Forest Disturbance Science. “Weather, the day-to-day state of the atmosphere in a region, influences individual fires within a fire season. In contrast, when we talk about fire climate, we’re looking at the statistics of weather over a certain period. Fire climate sets atmospheric conditions for fire activity in longer time frames and larger geographic scales.”

Wildfires impact atmospheric conditions through emissions of gases, particles, water, and heat. Some of the article focuses on radiative forcing from fire emissions. Radiative forcing refers to the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus longwave) at the tropopause, the top of the troposphere where most weather takes place.

Smoke particles can generate radiative forcing mainly through scattering and absorbing solar radiation (direct radiative forcing), and modifying the cloud droplet concentrations and lifetime, and hence the cloud radiative properties (indirect radiative forcing). The change in radiation can cause further changes in global temperatures and precipitation.

“Wildfire emissions can have remarkable impacts on radiative forcing,” says Liu.

“During fire events or burning seasons, smoke particles reduce overall solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere at local and regional levels. At the global scale, fire emissions of carbon dioxide contribute substantially to the global greenhouse effect.”

Other major findings covered in the synthesis include:

The radiative forcing of smoke particles can generate significant regional climate effects, leading to lower temperatures at the ground surface.
Smoke particles mostly suppress cloud formation and precipitation. Fire events could lead to more droughts.
Black carbon, essentially the fine particles of carbon that color smoke, plays different roles in affecting climate. In the middle and lower atmosphere, its presence could lead to a more stable atmosphere. Black carbon plays a special role in the snow-climate feedback loop, accelerating snow melting.

Land surface changes may be triggered that also play into future effects. “Wildfire is a disturbance of ecosystems,” says Liu. “Besides the atmospheric impacts, wildfires also modify terrestrial ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, soil fertility, grazing value, biodiversity, and tourism. The effects can in turn trigger land use changes that in turn affect the atmosphere.”

The article concludes by outlining issues that lead to uncertainties in understanding fire-climate interactions and the future research needed to address them.

Full text of the article: [note from Bill. We deleted the link to the for-profit web site with the pay wall]

climate change open access research

January was 5th driest on record

According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center January was the fifth driest January on record in the contiguous United States.

More details from NOAA:

The average January national precipitation total was 1.32 inches, 0.90 inch below the 20^th century average, ranking as the fifth-driest January on record and the driest since 2003. Dry conditions dominated much of the western and southern United States, with severe-to-exceptional drought engulfing much of California and Nevada. Numerous winter storms impacted the central and eastern U.S., bringing above-average snowfall but closer-to-average total precipitation for the month.

climate change weather

Report concludes climate change will require the number of wildland firefighters in Australia to double by 2030

wildfire activity related to climate change — How climate change affects wildfire activity. From the Climate Council report. Click to see a larger version.

A report issued by Australia’s privately funded Climate Council has concluded that the number of professionals needed to fight bushfires in Australia will double by 2030. This major shift will be required by changes attributed to climate change. The 63-page report, titled Be Prepared: The Changing Climate and Australia’s Bushfire Threat, is entirely devoted to how climate change is already affecting wildland fires and how the rate of change is expected to increase over the next decades.

According to the report the most direct link between bushﬁres and climate change comes from the long-term trend towards a hotter climate. The change is increasing the frequency and severity of very hot days and driving up the likelihood of very high ﬁre danger caused by weather. Changes in temperature and rainfall may also affect the amount and condition of fuel and the probability of lightning strikes.

The report lays out the current and predicted situation extremely well through the text and illuminating graphics. Click on the images here from the report to see larger versions.

I especially like the graphic above, which illustrates how four factors that affect wildland fire are being influenced by climate change

Ignitions: more lightning leads to more fires;
Fuel load will increase due to higher carbon dioxide levels, higher temperatures, and more rainfall. It could also decrease in some areas and vegetation types as a result of higher temperatures and less rain.
Fuel condition: higher temperatures and decreasing rainfall will increase fire activity while more rain in some areas will decrease fire activity.
Weather: higher temperatures will greatly increase fire activity.

Obviously it is a complex scenario with the factors having varying effects around the world where climate change affects local areas differently and vegetation types have specific responses to changes in weather.

The report concentrates on the effects in Australia, but also covers changes observed world-wide. As we have pointed out, in the United States there was an abrupt transition of ﬁre activity in the mid-1980s with higher ﬁre frequency, longer fire durations, and longer ﬁre seasons. Fire frequency from 1987 to 2003 was nearly four times the average for 1970 through 1986. The area burned from 1987 to 2003 was more than six times that from 1970 to 1986, and the length of the ﬁre season increased by about 2 months (Westerling et al., 2006).

The report discussed how fires affect carbon in the atmosphere:

Bushﬁres generate many feedbacks to the climate system, some of which can increase warming, while others decrease it. Emission of CO2 from bushﬁres generally represents a redistribution of existing carbon in the active carbon cycle from vegetation to the atmosphere.

As long as the vegetation is allowed to recover after a ﬁre, it can reabsorb a very large fraction of the carbon released. By contrast, the burning of fossil fuels represents additional carbon inserted into the active land-atmosphere-ocean carbon cycle.

Increasing fire danger will make it more difficult to find times when planned prescribed fires are within the established prescriptions, which could result in fewer acres treated and higher fuel loads near wildland urban interfaces.

Australia climate change weather

Research: climate change may reduce conifer regeneration after wildfire

Government employees working for Oregon State University have determined that predicted increases in temperature and drought in the coming century may make it more difficult for conifers such as ponderosa pine to regenerate after major forest fires on dry, low-elevation sites, in some cases leading to conversion of forests to grass or shrub lands, a report suggests.

But even though you paid for it already by funding the research as a taxpayer, it will cost you $35.95 to purchase a copy of their findings, written by Erich Kyle Dodson and Heather Taylor Root of the University’s Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society in Corvallis, Oregon. The for-profit Elsevier corporation headquartered in the Netherlands published the paper. Wildfire Today supports open access to the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research. (UPDATE April 4, 2018: the research is now available for no additional charge.)

Dodson and Root concluded that moisture stress is a key limitation for conifer regeneration following stand-replacing wildfire, which will likely increase with climate change. This will make post-fire recovery on dry sites slow and uncertain. If forests are desired in these locations, more aggressive attempts at reforestation may be needed, they said.

The study, published in Forest Ecology and Management, was done in a portion of the Metolius River watershed in the eastern Cascade Range of Oregon, which prior to a 2002 fire was mostly ponderosa pine with some Douglas-fir and other tree species. The research area was not salvage-logged or replanted following the severe, stand-replacing fire.

“A decade after this fire, there was almost no tree regeneration at lower, drier sites,” said Erich Dodson, a researcher with the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. “There was some regeneration at higher sites with more moisture. But at the low elevations, it will be a long time before a forest comes back, if it ever does.”

Similar situations may be found in many areas of the American West in coming decades, the researchers say, and recruitment of new forests may be delayed or prevented – even in climate conditions that might have been able to maintain an existing forest. While mature trees can use their roots to tap water deeper in the soil, competition with dense understory vegetation can make it difficult for seedlings to survive.

Openings in ponderosa pine forests created by wildfire have persisted for more than a century on harsh, south-facing slopes in Colorado, the researchers noted in their report. And fire severity is already increasing in many forests due to climate change – what is now thought of as a drought in some locations may be considered average by the end of the next century.

If trees do fail to regenerate, it could further reduce ecosystem carbon storage and amplify the greenhouse effect, the study said.

Restoration treatment including thinning and prescribed burning may help reduce fire severity and increase tree survival after wildfire, as well as provide a seed source for future trees, Dodson said. These dry sites with less resilience to stand-replacing fire should be priorities for treatment, if maintaining a forest is a management objective, the study concluded.

Higher-elevation, mixed conifer forests in less moisture-limited sites may be able to recover from stand-replacing wildfire without treatment, the researchers said.

climate change open access Oregon regeneration research

Wildfire briefing, October 4, 2013

Measuring live fuel moisture from space

Southern California researchers at Chapman University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are trying to develop a model that would use data from satellites to determine the amount of moisture in live vegetation. This is an important variable that planners and fire behavior analysts need when managing preparedness and predicting the spread of wildfires. The NASA funded work is in the preliminary stage. If the effort is successful it would be possible to obtain daily updates of live fuel moisture using information collected by two satellites, Terra and Aqua, the first passing overhead in the morning and the second in the afternoon.

When I was Captain at Descanso Station in southern California it was an official fuel moisture monitoring location. Every 10 to 14 days our engine crew would drive out on Viejas Grade Road and fill one-quart paint cans with clippings from chamise bushes. This is still being done all over the western United States, but with different species in other areas. In the basement back at the station we would weigh the unopened cans, then after removing the lids the cans would be placed in a convection oven overnight at moderate heat, and weighed again the next day. The entire building had the smell of cooked chamise. After accounting for the weight of the empty can, we would calculate the percent moisture that was lost. I plotted the data on a graph on a piece of paper along with the readings from the previous year, then made copies and snail-mailed them to the other fire stations on the District. Obviously this was before everyone had a computer on their desk and in their pocket.

Research: red stage needles do not recover moisture overnight

Preliminary research indicates that red stage lodgepole pine needles do not recover fuel moisture overnight, as occurs in other fine, dead surface fuels. The study was conducted on foliage from trees that had been attacked by mountain pine beetles. If this is confirmed it will have implications for predicting the rate of spread of fires in bug-killed stands.

Time Magazine: firefighting tactics in a warming world

Bryan Walsh, a senior editor at Time, writes about the increasing number of fires and considers a less than aggressive suppression strategy for some of them. In the article he used a phrase we have written many times:

The U.S. fights wildfires like it once fought wars—with overwhelming force aiming for unconditional surrender.

We do not entirely agree with Mr. Walsh. The federal land management agencies at one time DID fight fires with the overwhelming force they could muster, but budget cuts, a leadership vacuum, and timid initial attack policies have made that a distant memory. However some organizations still do have overwhelming force strategies, such as CAL FIRE.

Another “wildfire”

We take notice when the word “wildfire” is stolen and attached to something that has no connection to a fire that burns vegetation. There have been Wildfire songs before, but The Saturdays recorded a new version this summer.

climate change research

Wildfire briefing, September 6, 2013

Map elevated wildfire risk, climate change

Scientists expect fire risk in the U.S. to escalate by the end of the century

Hot and dry conditions lead to more fires. Those were the findings presented in 2012 by a team of researchers that used NASA satellite data and climate models to predict fire activity in the United States. Now, a new animation shows how dry conditions will cause different parts of the U.S., Canada and Mexico to experience an increased risk of fire by the end of the century. By mapping projected values for a measure of dryness known as the potential evaporation—a calculation that’s based on temperature, rainfall and wind speed estimates—scientists are able to interpret how fire activity will be influenced by future climates. Changes in dryness relative to 1980 levels are shown in the animation using colors, where reds represent an increase in dryness and blues represent a decrease. Watch the video to see how dry conditions are expected to spread across North America by the year 2100.

Another firefighter fatality in Portugal

A seventh firefighter in a month passed away in a hospital in Portugal after suffering burn injuries on a wildland fire last week.

MAFFS demobilized

Five military Modular Airborne FireFighting System C-130 air tankers were released from fire suppression duty yesterday. Since the year’s initial activation June 11, MAFFS crews have flown 572 missions and made 535 drops using 1,375,981 gallons of fire retardant. That works out to 2,406 gallons per mission.

Granite Mountain Hotshots memorial items to be removed

Soon after 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots were killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30, mourners began placing memorial items on the fence surrounding their compound at the Prescott Fire Department. Now over two months later the city decided they have to do something with the hundreds of objects which include T-shirts, photos, posters, and other items. The City announced Thursday that the Fire Department and area volunteers would begin to remove them on Sept. 10.

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Daily Courier:

Now, officials say, it is time to begin packing away the items for preservation, and possible inclusion in a more permanent memorial in the future.

“Items that are able to be preserved will be temporarily stored until plans are finalized for the future permanent memorial,” the city’s new release stated.

City officials have noted that the outdoor elements have taken a toll on many of the items. Flowers, cardboard signs, and other perishable items were earlier removed. Many of the T-shirts from fire departments around the country have faded from dark-blue to gray.

Arizona climate change fatality lodd MAFFS Portugal Yarnell Fire

Panel discussion about wildfires

Firefighters at Pilot Peak on the Rim Fire, August 26, 2013. Photo by Mike McMillan.

Today on the NOW with Alex Wagner show there was a 10-minute discussion by a five-person panel about the current state of wildfires, how climate change affects wildfires, funding for fire management, and the risk of firefighters while protecting houses. We don’t get involved in politics here on Wildfire Today unless it directly affects fire management. But, even though the host mentions a particular political party once or twice, we believe this video has value here since it is the most in-depth nationally broadcast discussion about wildfires that we have seen.

Unfortunately the scientist who was asked to explain why we are “seeing violent, dangerous wildfires at what would seem to be historic rates”, was from NASA and his expertise appeared to be remote sensing, rather than wildfires or fire behavior.

We encourage you to comment on the video, but any that are strictly political and bash individual politicians or either party will be quickly deleted.

After the 10-second ad plays, you can click on Options/Full Screen to fill your screen with the video.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

climate change

Wildfire briefing, July 31, 2013

Two reports released about air tankers

The U.S. Forest Service recently released two reports about firefighting aircraft, the products of contracts issued by the agency. The details are over at Fire Aviation, but here is a summary:

AVID, a Virginia-based company that employed a crew of retired and current aviation professionals, produced a report “…to build analytical data that can be used to estimate the requirement for airtankers in the future.” The Fire Aviation article about the report can be found here.
The U.S. Forest Service has released a study on how the C-27J could be used by the agency if the Air Force gives them seven of the aircraft as expected.

Summary of fire stats

The National Park Service’s Morning Report written by Bill Halainen has a table that tracks some of the statistics about fires over the last five days. Here is an example from today’s report:

Judge rejects California’s lawsuit over 2007 fire

A judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by the state of California against the state’s largest timber company over liability for the 2007 Moonlight Fire which burned more than 65,000 acres in Northern California. The state was hoping to recoup some of the $22.5 million spent fighting the fire.

Last year the company, Sierra Pacific, agreed to pay nearly $50 million and donate 22,500 acres of land to settle a federal government lawsuit over the Moonlight fire.

Congressional Task Force Links Worsening Wildfires to Climate Change

On Tuesday the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change convened a panel of experts on climate and wildland fire to discuss the impacts of climate change on wildfires. Below is an excerpt from an article at the National Journal:

…Panelists cited a number of reasons for wildfire flare-ups, including land-use patterns and insect activity. But the discussion kept circling back to climate change.

“Scientists tell us these changes are not just random variability,” Waxman said. “Bigger and more-intense fires are one of the red flags of climate change.”

Climate-change expert William Sommers, a researcher at George Mason University’s EastFIRE Laboratory, agreed. Sommers cautioned that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide will only worsen wildfires in decades to come. “If current greenhouse-gas emission trends are not sharply reversed in the immediate future, we will see observed trends in wildfire risk accelerate,” he warned.

Waxman and Whitehouse asked firefighting and forestry experts for policy recommendations to help mitigate the situation.

Panelists, including Santa Fe, N.M., Fire Chief Erik Litzenberg and Rick Swan, director of supervisory personnel and health and safety for the California Department of Forestry Firefighters, cited budget cuts as a major stumbling block in efforts to combat wildfires, and called for increased funding for park services and firefighters.

“We are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of fires, especially in California,” Swan said. “But we are not seeing the same increase in staffing levels and funding.”

air tanker C-27J climate change Moonlight Fire report

Western wildfires and climate change

The Union of Concerned Scientists have produced this infographic about how climate change could affect wildfires in the western United States.

In addition to the total number of fires or the number of large fires, one of the more telling statistics is the average size of fires.

climate change