A dry winter and warm dry spring this year left Colorado forests tinder dry, ripe for the wildfires now raging there, and we can expect more of the same everywhere under climate change, reports Nathanael Massey at ClimateWire. Although no single fire, no matter how severe, can be concretely linked to global climate change, the climatic conditions seen in Colorado this year fit the kind of pattern scientists expect to see in the future. In one of the most comprehensive fire-modeling studies to date, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Texas Tech University aggregated 16 separate climate models to map future fire-prone regions of the globe. Their findings suggest that, in the decades to come, fire prevalence will decrease in the tropics — but will increase, possibly severely, at more northerly latitudes, especially in the western United States. Lead author Max Moritz, a fire specialist based at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources said, “In next 30 years, we’re looking at pretty consistent disruption of current fire patterns for over half the planet — most of which involve increases” in severity, said lead author Max Moritz, a fire specialist based at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources.
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As wildfires rage in the West, scientists see conditions worsening in …
http://eenews.net/public/climatewire/2012/06/14/1
7 hours ago – As wildfires rage in the West, scientists see conditions worsening in future decades. Nathanael Massey, E&E reporter. ClimateWire: Thursday …
