Climate and weather are two separate scientific disciplines.
On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 12:27 PM, James Stevens <jstevenstexas@aol.com> wrote:
They can't tell us if we are getting snow or not in five days but they know how many acres are going to burn in 38 years? Rigghhhhtttt.....
> Geophysical Union <http://sites.agu.org/> in San Francisco on Dec. 4,
On Dec 19, 2012, at 13:44, Kim Noyes <kimnoyes@gmail.com> wrote:
> U.S. Wildfires: Burn Area Expected To Double By 2050
>
> By Andrew Freedom - Climate Central
>
> Posted: 12/17/2012 9:11 am EST
>
> Warmer and drier conditions in coming decades will likely cause the burned
> area from wildfires in the U.S. to double in size by 2050, according to new
> research based on satellite observations and computer modeling experiments.
> The research, which was first presented at the annual meeting of the American> fires affecting<http://www.climatecentral.org/news/western-us-poised-for-an-active-wildfire-season>
> provides insight into both recent wildfire trends and the sharp increase in
> dryness — and therefore wildfire susceptibility — in certain regions of the
> country.
>
> The 2012 U.S. wildfire season was one of the worst on record, with massive
> Colorado<http://www.climatecentral.org/news/colorados-most-destructive-fire-now-fully-contained>and
> New
> Mexico<http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/new-mexico-wildfire-continues-to-grow>,> season]<http://www.climatecentral.org/images/uploads/news/12_14_12_andrew_2012firesus.jpg>
> in particular. The new research suggests that high wildfire years, such as
> 2012, would likely occur 2-to-4 times per decade by 2050, rather than once
> per decade as they do now.
>
> [image: 2012 wildfire
>
> *A visualization of cumulative fires from Jan. 1 through Oct. 31, 2012,> Credit: NASA.*
> detected by the MODIS instrument on board the Terra and Aqua satellites.
> Bright yellow shows areas that are more intense and have a larger area that
> is actively burning, flaming and/or smoldering. Click to enlarge the image.> Center in Greenbelt, Md<http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html>.
>
> In addition, the research shows that the midsection of the country — from
> Texas to North Dakota — is likely to become drier as the climate continues
> to warm in response to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, such as
> carbon dioxide. That drying will significantly increase the amount of
> burned area in this zone, said Doug Morton of NASA's Goddard Space Flight> scientists<http://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-the-age-of-western-wildfires-14873>,
> Morton said other regions of the country, including the West, will likely
> see a continued increase in burned area as well.
>
> The research findings are consistent with other recent reports, including
> work done by Climate Central> Terra<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/terra/index.html>and
> showing that Western wildfires are already much larger than they were as
> recently as in the 1970s. In land managed by the U.S. Forest Service, there
> were nearly five times more fires larger than 25,000 acres each year in the
> past decade compared to the 1970s.
>
> The NASA study used a burned area dataset that was derived from three
> satellites: Landsat and the MODIS imagers aboard the agency's
> Aqua <http://aqua.nasa.gov/> satellites. The study used that satellite> Panel on Climate Change's <http://www.ipcc.ch/> upcoming Fifth Assessment
> information to develop a time series of burned area, focusing on the
> relationship between wildfires and climate conditions during the past 25
> years. The researchers then used eight climate models built for the
> U.N. Intergovernmental> Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) <http://www.nifc.gov/>, which shows that
> Report, which is due out beginning in 2013, to determine how changes in
> dryness may alter wildfire ignitions and burned area.
>
> "What our analysis shows is that for the major U.S. burning regions . . .
> we see a strong increase in the risk of fire by mid-century based on
> looking at this projection of the dryness of the climate. And that
> translates to about a doubling of the projected burned area," Morton said
> in an interview.
>
> Through August of this year, the U.S. burned area was greater than 6.17
> million acres, according to a satellite-derived fire database that provides
> estimates of burned area. That was not enough to set a record, but it
> exceeded the area burned during 12 of the 15 years since record-keeping
> began in 1997.
>
> The satellite data differs from numbers maintained by the U.S. National
> fires torched 9.2 million acres of forest, brushland and grassland across
> the nation through November, the most recent month for which numbers are
> available. That's the second-largest area burned since the NIFC began
> keeping records in 2000 (the worst was 2006), and nearly 50 percent more
> than the 10-year average over the first decade of this century.
>
> The West, along with much of the rest of the country, was mired in drought
> for much of the year, which contributed to that region's particularly
> severe wildfire season.
>
> "When you have reduced rainfall and less snowpack, you dry out that whole
> Western U.S. much more quickly than you do in other fire years. It gives
> you a longer time period to burn and it sets up those ecosystems to be more
> flammable whether you get ignitions from human sources, which are quite
> common, or from natural sources. So it's possible just by lengthening the
> fire season, you get more burned area," Morton said.
>
> While wildfires are influenced by climate conditions, they also contribute
> to climate change as well, since fires burn biomass and emit large
> quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further warming the
> climate.
>
> The satellite datasets gathered by Morton and his colleagues allowed them
> to get a better idea how much carbon wildfires have released into the
> atmosphere. They found that carbon emissions from wildfires have grown from
> an average of 8.8 million tons per year from 1984-1995, to an average of 22
> million tons per year from 1996-2008.
>
> "With the climate change forecast for this region, this trend likely will
> continue as the Western U.S. gets warmer and drier on average," said Chris
> Williams of Clark University, in a press release. "If this comes to pass,
> we can anticipate increased fire severity and an even greater area burned
> annually, causing a further rise in the release of carbon dioxide."
>
> There are opportunities to limit the uptick in fire-related emissions, the
> researchers found. By reducing the number of prescribed burns and
> agricultural fires, land managers may be able to reduce the amount of
> carbon emissions from fires, despite the increase in large non-prescribed
> wildfires. About 70 percent of active fire detections in the U.S. each year
> are due to agricultural fires and land-management activities.
>
> --
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