Forest fires in U.S. West are a window into the future
By Robert Krier
3 July 2012 The fires that are burning throughout the country offer a window into what we can expect in the future as the climate heats up. That grim assessment comes from Steve Running, a wildfire expert, ecologist and forestry professor at the University of Montana. Running was among the scores of scientists who, along with Al Gore, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Running’s insight is so sought after these days that he has speaking engagements scheduled four years out, about one a week. The pace picked up in June, when people began turning to him for his perspective on the massive Western wildfires. As of Monday, there were 52 active fires across the country, most in the West, that have burned more than 900,000 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Nearly 1,000 homes have been destroyed in the West alone, and at least three deaths have been attributed to the fires. InsideClimate News caught up with Running last weekend to get his views on what’s going on now, and what we can expect in a world dominated by climate change. ICN: How do the conditions this year compare to what we saw in 1988 with the Yellowstone fire? (That wildfire, the largest in Yellowstone National Park’s history, burned nearly 800,000 acres and about a third of the park.) Running: We have had many dry years in the West. But when we get an ignition, and then high winds (which is what happened in the Yellowstone fire and in the recent Colorado fires), the fires turn into blast furnaces. The wind pushes the flames into more fuel faster and injects more oxygen so the fires just explode. Think of when you blow on a sleepy campfire and it flares right up. […] ICN: Much of the dead fuel that has accumulated has been attributed to pine beetles, which have killed millions of trees. Has climate change played a role in the beetle’s population explosion? Running: As a rough estimate, you need a few nights of -30 degrees once every five to 10 years (to keep pine beetles under control). Those really cold nights knock the population back, and they take years to recover. In the past, -30 degree winter night temperatures did occasionally occur. ICN: How much have the wintertime lows been going up? Running: Here in Montana, the absolute minimum temperature, the coldest night of the year, has gone up 10 degrees. […] ICN: You’ve said the snowpack is disappearing two weeks earlier, on average, and that’s contributing to the fire danger. Are there areas of the West that are losing their snowpack even sooner? Running: The mountain areas we see most at risk are the Cascades and Sierra with “warm” snow packs right near 32 degrees. With very little warming, they melt. Colder, drier snow, like in the higher elevation Rockies, can warm up a few degrees and still not melt until the end of the season. […] ICN: What are some of the things fires are doing now that they rarely if ever did before? Running: Nighttime low humidity and lack of dewfall allow some fires to burn actively all night long, along with dry winds. They burn down hills, they throw embers miles ahead. […] ICN: What will the West’s future look like, if greenhouse gas emissions stay on their current pace? Running: We expect Western landscapes to get more arid as they warm up, and the winter snowpack to diminish in size and seasonal duration. This means that water management will be even a bigger deal than now, if that’s possible. […]
