29/07/2018

Fire, Fire Everywhere: The 2018 Global Wildfire Season Is Already Disastrous

Huffington Post - John Vidal

A warming planet has exacerbated a dire global fire threat brought on by growing cities, poor urban planning and more combustible landscapes.
Yannis Behrakis / Reuters 
Drought turned the surrounding woodland into fuel, strong winds fanned the flames and in just a few hours this week fired consumed the Greek coastal resort of Mati, outside Athens. Homes and hotels were scorched or destroyed, more than 80 people died and many hundreds ran to the sea, seeking refuge from the flames.
Mati is the deadliest wildfire of 2018 so far, but the northern hemisphere fire season now extends from June until October, and more death and destruction is inevitable as one of the strongest, longest-lasting global heatwaves in decades continues to envelop countries from Siberia to the Mediterranean, from North America to East Asia. Temperature records keep getting surpassed, and there’s little rain in the forecast for many regions.
People have had to be evacuated from Yosemite National Park, Sweden has lost an estimated 30,000 hectares of forest and large areas of bone-dry Latvia, Italy, Finland and Norway have all been blanketed in smoke.
The 2018 wildfire season has been dramatic, prompting headlines about the world being on fire, but it is only unusual in that so many places are experiencing major fires at the same time, scientists say. Large blazes wracked Indonesia in 2015, Canada and Spain in 2016, and Chile and Portugal in 2017. In Russia, villages, farmland and more than 1,100 square miles of forest were destroyed in 2010, and again in 2015.
Fires used to be seen as local, but we should see them as part of a global-scale phenomenon.
In the United States, nearly 4 million acres across Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Oregon have burned so far this year, about 10 percent more than the annual average at this time of year, but still nowhere near the 10 million acres that burned in 2015, according to the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center.
A 2016 report by the European Environment Agency suggests Mediterranean countries are seeing more heat extremes and reduced rainfall, resulting in more forest fires. The number of fires this year across Europe is up 40 percent on average, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
The disastrous fires are due both to human behavior and planetary change, said David Bowman, a professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
“Growing cities, poor planning, recurring heatwaves, more people living closer to forests and more combustible landscapes have together created a more fire-prone world,” said Bowman.
On top of these factors is the devastating impact of climate change, which through higher temperatures is now accelerating ecological instability. “It is causing fire seasons to start earlier and finish later,” said Bowman. “We are seeing more severe, more intense and longer lasting wildfires causing more loss of life and property. Fires used to be seen as local, but we should see them as part of a global-scale phenomenon.”
Studies in the U.S., Australia and Europe show wildfires increasing in number and scale, and becoming increasingly an urban problem.
“We are confronting more large fires, a tripling of homes burned and more frequent large evacuations in North America,” said Tania Schoennagel, a fire scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “This trend will continue in response to further warming.”
Firefighters tackle a forest fire near Potsdam, Germany, on July 26, 2018. JULIAN STAHLE via Getty Images
“Wildland fire can be a friend and a foe,” explains the U.S. Forest Service.
“In the right place at the right time, wildland fire can create many environmental benefits, such as reducing grass, brush, and trees that can fuel large and severe wildfires and improve wildlife habitat,” said a Forest Service spokesman. But In the wrong place at the wrong time, fires can threaten lives, homes and resources.
“Earth has evolved through fire and plants and humans have evolved to adapt to fiery landscapes,” said Andrew Scott, author of a new book, Burning Planet, and professor of geology at Royal Holloway, University of London. “Fire has become the enemy in cities, but we have to learn to live with it.”
The vast majority of fires are caused not by lightning or natural events, but by human error or vandalism, according to the U.S. National Park Service. As much as 90 percent are the result of things like campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, negligently discarded cigarettes or arson.
Growing cities, poor planning, recurring heatwaves, more people living closer to forests, and more combustible landscapes have together created a more fire-prone world.
“Changing climatic and weather conditions are exacerbating these problems,” said Fantina Tedim, a researcher at the University of Porto, Portugal. “Wildland is coming closer to settlements, rural areas are likely to be depopulated with the result that there is less management of forests and more build-up of flammable material.”
Because humans can start fires so easily, there is no simple way to prevent them, short of drastic and likely unfeasible solutions like removing people permanently from susceptible areas or redesigning landscapes to remove trees completely.
“Managing fire is about managing landscape,” said Bowman. “We are creating landscapes that are increasingly flammable. People are living in more and more dangerous environments because they believe technology will keep them safe.”
“We are just not prepared,” he continued. “Will there be more fires? With climate change, yes, lots more. We must get used to them, and learn to adapt. It’s like the earth has thrown down the gauntlet and we are paralyzed.”

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It’s A Savage Summer In The Northern Hemisphere – And Climate Change Is Slashing The Odds Of More Heatwaves

The Conversation -  | 

Firefighters and volunteers battle a blaze near Loutraki in southern Greece. Vassilis Psomas/EPA
In Australia we know about sweltering summer heat. We all remember the images of burned koala paws, collapsing tennis players and, far more seriously, the tragic events of Black Saturday.
Aussies may scoff at Britain’s idea of a heatwave, but this time it’s the real deal and it’s no laughing matter.
Extreme heat has hit locations throughout the Northern Hemisphere, in places as far apart as Montreal, Glasgow, Tokyo and Lapland. In the past few weeks heat records have tumbled in a wide range of places, most notably:
Heat has not been the only problem. Much of northern Europe is experiencing a very persistent drought, with little to no measurable rainfall in months. This has caused the normally lush green fields of England and other European countries to turn brown and even reveal previously hidden archaeological monuments.
There have also been major wildfires in northern England, Sweden and, most recently and devastatingly, Greece. The Greek wildfires came off the back of a very dry winter and spring.

What’s behind the widespread extreme heat?
The jet stream, a high-altitude band of air that pushes weather systems around at lower altitudes, has been weaker than normal. It has also been positioned unusually far to the north, particularly over Europe. This has kept the low-pressure systems that often drive wind and rain over northern Europe at bay.
The jet stream has remained locked in roughly the same position over the Atlantic Ocean and northern Europe for the past couple of months. This has meant that the same weather types have remained over the same locations most of the time.
Weather is typically more transient than it has been recently. Even when we do have blocking high-pressure systems associated with high temperatures in northern Europe, they don’t normally linger as long as this.

Is it driven by climate change?
Although climatologists have made great strides in recent years in the field of event attribution – identifying the human climate fingerprint on particular extreme weather events – it is hard to quantify the role of climate change in an event that is still unfolding.
Until the final numbers are in we won’t be able to tell just how much climate change has altered the likelihood or intensity of these particular heat extremes.
Having said that, we can use past analyses of extreme heat events, together with future climate change projections, to infer whether climate change is playing a role in these events.
We also know that increasing numbers of hot temperature records are being set, and that the increased probability of hot temperature records can indeed be attributed to the human influence on the climate.
In Europe especially, there is already a large body of literature that has looked at the role of human-caused climate change in heat extremes. In fact, the very first event attribution study, led by Peter Stott from the UK Met Office, found that human-caused climate change had at least doubled the likelihood of the infamous European heatwave of 2003.
People in Brussels trying to escape the heat in 2003. EPA Photo/Belga/Jacques Collet
For all manner of heat extremes in Europe and elsewhere, including in Japan, a clear and discernible link with climate change has been made.
Research has also shown that heat extremes similar to those witnessed over the past month or two are expected to become more common as global temperatures continue to climb. The world has so far had around 1℃ of global warming above pre-industrial levels, but at the global warming limits proposed in the Paris climate agreement, hot summers like that of 2003 in central Europe would be a common occurrence.
At 2℃ of global warming, the higher of the two Paris targets, 2003-like hot summers would very likely happen in most years.
Similarly, we know that heat exposure and heat-induced deaths in Europe will increase with global warming, even if we can limit this warming to the levels agreed in Paris.

 But summers have always been hot, haven’t they?
For most parts of the world summers have got warmer, and the hottest summer on record is relatively recent – such as 2003 in parts of central Europe and 2010 in much of eastern Europe. One exception is central England, where the hottest summer remains 1976, although it may be challenged this year.
While extreme hot summers and heatwaves did happen in the past, they were less common. One big difference as far as England is concerned is that its extreme 1976 heatwave was a global outlier, whereas this year’s isn’t.
In 1976 northwestern Europe had higher temperature anomalies than almost anywhere else on the globe. In June 2018 the same region was unusually warm, but so was most of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.
So while the persistent weather patterns are driving much of the extreme heat we’re seeing across the Northern Hemisphere, we know that human-caused climate change is nudging the temperatures up and increasing the odds of new heat extremes.

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