The effects of climate change are complex and far-reaching. Therefore, there is a perception that "alarmists" are demanding changes that would impact our economy now for something that will not effect us for years or decades to come. That thinking is dangerous because the effects of our industrial pillaging are here today.
Here in Arizona, there are two things that our local news updates us on with almost daily regularity: deaths of immigrants in the desert and forest fires. How much acreage has burned, what percentage containment, how many "hot shot" squads are on the scene - these are all standard fair for a local newscast. This is an issue that I am familiar with via daily experience.
Now, a new study suggests that forest fires have been on the rise in the last few decades due to global warming. Warming brings earlier springs, greater snowmelt, and thereby increases the fire season. This increases the number of fires, thereby decreasing the available sequestering capability of the forest and unloading that stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere once more.
[Update] MSNBC has this story as its top story.
The study by Dan Cayan, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Climate Research Division, and Anthony Westerling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, (among others) found that during the 1970's and 1980's that acreage consumed by forest fires increased fairly dramatically.
[LiveScience.com] Cayan and colleagues noted that in the mid 1980's there was a jump of four times the average number of wildfires in the West compared with the early 1980's and 1970's. The total area burned was six-and-a-half times greater in the mid 1980's than the earlier years examined.
More importantly, they found that the majority (72%) of these fires were caused during years where melting snows came earlier due to an early spring. Only 11% of fires occurred in years with late snowfall and late melts. Obviously as the specter of dramatic climate change looms larger, such years will become rare indeed.
"At higher elevations what really drives the fire season is the temperature. When you have a warm spring and early summer, you get earlier snowmelt," said study coauthor Anthony Westerling ... "With the snowmelt coming out a month earlier, areas then get drier earlier overall and there is a longer season in which a fire can be started--there's more opportunity for ignition."
This change in the rate of forest fires is happening now. This is not a prediction based on computer modelling; this is a study of actual forest fires from 1970 to 2003. During that time period, the length of the forest fire season has increased by 78 days.
"I see this as one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States," said study coauthor Thomas Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. " Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it's not 50 to 100 years away--it's happening now in forest ecosystems through fire."
In Arizona and most of the western United States, governors brief their people on the outlook for the fire season every year. This year, that briefing occurred in February.
[Arizona Republic] "Earlier than normal" was the key phrase echoed time and again as state and federal officials briefed a group composed largely of local emergency planning and fire personnel. High temperatures arrived earlier than normal, fuels are drier earlier than normal, and preparations are under way earlier than normal.
The effects of global warming go beyond melting glaciers and arctic ice pack. Climate change effects every single natural process on the planet from oceanic currents to forest fires. This threat is not only imminent, it is present.
PS I wrote yesterday about global warming's effect on ocean acidification. We see the immediate effects of this as well when we see the destruction of coral reefs around the world.
Crossposted from SmokeyMonkey.org