Caption by Mike Carlowicz, including reporting from Holli Riebeek20 September 2012 A deep and persistent drought struck vast portions of the continental United States in 2012. Though there has been some relief in the late summer, a pair of satellites operated by NASA shows that the drought lingers in the underground water supplies that are […]
By Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times12 October 2012 The worst drought in half a century has plagued two-thirds of the nation, devastating farms and stoking wildfires that scorched almost 9 million acres this year. Withering heat blanketed the East Coast and Midwest, killing scores of people and making July the hottest month ever recorded in […]
By Dan Turner18 September 2012 As the signs that the world is warming grow ever more unmistakable, one of the ironies of the American political debate on the topic is that leaders in the states being most heavily affected are often those least inclined to do anything about it, or even acknowledge that there’s a […]
By Darryl Fears7 October 2012 In the worst wildfire season on record, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service ran out of money to pay for firefighters, fire trucks and aircraft that dump retardant on monstrous flames. So officials did about the only thing they could: take money from other forest management programs. But many […]
By Alyson Kenward4 October 2012 Over the summer and on into the fall, images of flames, smoke plumes, firefighting teams and ruined homes have been on replay, and with good reason: As of Aug. 31, this year tied the record for total acreage burned by wildfires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. More than […]
During the past 40 years, wildfires have started earlier in the year and have continued to burn later in the year, lengthening the overall “burn season.” This figure illustrates the start date of the first wildfire each year on USFS land and the start date of the last recorded fire. The inset shows how the […]
When we compared the average annual spring and summer (March-August) temperatures to the number of large wildfires burning across all 11 Western states, we observed a relationship similar to that reported by Westerling, et al.; years with higher-than-average spring and summer temperatures also tended to be years with more large fires. Seasonal temperatures are a […]
Among the Western States, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana have seen the most dramatic increases in wildfires since 1970. According to our analysis, the average annual number of large fires has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho, and at least doubled in California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. On the […]
Caption by Adam Voiland19 September 2012 Wildfires have burned throughout the western United States for months. Major blazes first emerged in New Mexico in May, then began to turn up in Colorado and Idaho in large numbers. Most recently, fires have surged in California and Washington. […] The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s […]
18 September 2012 (Climate Central) – The 2012 wildfire season isn’t over yet, but already this year is shaping up to be the one of the worst on record in the American West. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, with nearly two months still to go in the fire season, the total area already […]
