Climate Change and Wildfire
By Laura O’Connor | Version en français
If you turn on the news right now, there’s a good chance you’ll see images and videos of vicious orange flames engulfing almost 300,000 acres of land across California, making it the largest wildfire in the state’s history. Meanwhile in Greece, wildfires have claimed the lives on 90 people so far, and continue to burn through the Mediterranean nation. On the Western coast of Canada, foreign firefighters and support workers are being called in to help tame the many flaming bursts that have overcome various communities in British Columbia.
While it is true that certain regions, like California and British Columbia, have historically seen wildfires break out on a regular basis throughout summer months, regions that have historically never been faced with regular wildfires, such as Portugal, Ireland, Latvia, and other countries are now having to assemble firefighting teams and map out humanitarian efforts to deal with unprecedented wildfires. Over the past decades, climate change has altered various contributing factors, creating a recipe for more intense, uncontrollable, and lethal wildfires to break out around the globe. In fact, in comparison to 50 years ago, on average, wildfires last 78 days longer, and are charring twice the area.
Some of the primary environmental factors that contribute to these vicious fires that have been modified by climate change are temperature, precipitation, and levels of moisture in soil, all of which tie into one another. As temperatures rise, snow and ice melts earlier during winter, leading to dryer summers in certain fire-prone regions.
This not only means wildfires are more likely to start, it also means they are harder to contain and extinguish once they’ve started, and they’re intensity and veracity is increased. As a consequence of this, we are seeing countries such as Ireland, which has historically rarely fallen victim to wildfires, being exposed to unforgiving flames breaking out in the North. In addition, drier and hotter environments cultivate an ideal environment for invasive species such as the mountain pine beetle, which leads to the destruction of trees, creating more kindle wood for these wildfires to engulf and feed off of.
As is shown through viral videos and disturbing images of forests, homes, and buildings being swallowed by these flames, the humanitarian and economic consequences of these wildfires are catastrophic, displaying the multifaceted aftermath and effects of climate change. South Africa has lost at least 1200 homes, 7500 hectares of crops and 17,800 hectares of forest in veracious wildfires this year. An article posted by USA Today quotes California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Scott McLean, who said “I can remember a couple of years ago when we saw 10 to 12,000 firefighters in the states of California, Oregon and Washington and never the 14,000 we see now,” reaffirming what scientists and quantitative data have already proved: wildfires have and will continue to worsen as climate change intensifies.
The recognition and acknowledgement of this correlation between climate change and wildfires is crucial to creating safety measures and taking proper preventative steps in the periods leading up to drier seasons. Fire bans, bi-laws regarding burning garbage, and intensive training of firefighters are all common measures taken to avoid wildfires erupting during dry seasons; and while these are all important and necessary actions, long-term solutions must be addressed, all of which must acknowledge the impact of climate change on wildfires in order to be fully comprehensive. This entails planning and building frameworks for sustainable and green futures, in order to properly minimize the progressive worsening of wildfires.
As seen in California, South Africa, British Columbia, as well as in not-so-typical wildfire climates such as Portugal, Ireland and Latvia, the intensification of wildfires as a result of climate change has been catastrophic and lethal, and action is therefore dire, hence the cruciality of climate change education and ultimately, prevention.
Learn more about climate change by taking UN CC:Learn’s e-courses: https://unccelearn.org
About UN CC:Learn
UN CC:Learn is a partnership of more than 30 multilateral organizations supporting countries to design and implement systematic, recurrent and results-oriented climate change learning. Through its engagement at the national and global levels, UN CC:Learn contributes to the implementation of climate change training, education and public awareness-raising.
