By Mikaela Weisse, Elizabeth Dow Goldman, Nancy Harris, Matt Hansen, Peter Potapov, and Svetlana Turubanova 17 July 2017 (World Resources Institute) – Global Forest Watch released new satellite-based data showing how forests around the world changed in the year 2015. The data, produced through the analysis of roughly a million satellite images by the University […]
21 July 2017 (Insurance Journal) – British Columbia is extending a state of emergency for two more weeks as wildfires sweeping across the province’s interior show no sign of slowing. Premier John Horgan said Wednesday that his government’s first priority is to support the more than 45,000 people displaced by the fires, which have so […]
By Maryse Zeidler 8 July 2017 (CBC News) – The province of British Columbia has declared a state of emergency, as wildfires burn out of control throughout most of the Interior. “The extended weather forecast is calling for continued hot, dry weather, with risks of thunderstorms in many parts of the province,” the province said […]
Irvine, California, 29 June 2017 (UCI) – The world’s open grasslands and the beneficial fires that sustain them have shrunk rapidly over the past two decades, thanks to a massive increase in agriculture, according to a new study led by University of California, Irvine and NASA researchers published today in Science.Analyzing 1998 to 2015 data […]
By Mike Carlowicz 25 June 2017 (NASA) – Wildfires spread across southern Siberia in late June 2017. According to Russian state media, at least 27,000 hectares (100 square miles) were burning in the Irkutsk Oblast region. Another 27,000 hectares burned in neighboring states and regions. More than 200 firefighters were sent to control the blazes. […]
By Scott Waldman 27 June 2017 (Climatewire) – Climate change is driving up the number of forest fires ignited by lightning, and it’s pushing them farther north, to the edges of the Arctic tundra, researchers say. Lightning-caused fires have risen 2 to 5 percent a year for the last four decades, according to a paper […]
By Lauren Frayer 20 June 2017 ELVAS, Portugal (Los Angeles Times) – Once shaded in canopies of leaves, the N-236-1 is a rural road that cuts through central Portugal, hugging hillsides pungent with eucalyptus and pine. Now it is littered with husks of burned cars. Along the shoulder, ashen wisps of tree trunks stand sentinel […]
20 June 2017 (United Nations) – Extremely high May and June temperatures have broken records in parts of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the United States, the United Nations weather agency reported today, warning of more heatwaves to come.The heatwaves have arrived unusually early, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, noting at the […]
By Julia Jones, Nicole Chavez and Chandrika Narayan 18 June 2017 (CNN) – A raging wildfire has ripped through central Portugal, killing 61 people and injuring dozens more in what officials there describe as the “greatest wildfire tragedy of recent years.” At least 54 people were injured in the blaze Saturday, including eight firefighters and […]
By Maya L. Kapoor 2 June 2017 (High Country News) – U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Bob Keane has studied whitebark pine, a coniferous tree of the high country, for more than thirty years. Still, when asked to describe a whitebark to someone who’s never seen one, he takes a breath and pauses for a […]
