Another link to a harmful effect of Climate Change, this time to increased wildfires has been established in a new University of Utah study.
New study links wildfires and climate change
By John Hollenhorst, Deseret News
It appears to explain long-term changes in the frequency of fire over many centuries, and it may explain what's been happening in the West in recent years.
Power is lead author of the new study which explored lake-bottom sediments in hundreds of locations around the world.
The 20 scientists involved in the project concluded that there were fewer fires following the onset of a global cooling trend hundreds of years ago. Conversely, there were more fires after the trend reversed into a period of global warming.
"Our climate is the primary controller of fire, and so we have seen this in the last decade," Power said. "Temperatures have warmed. We're seeing more fires. We're seeing a longer fire season."
He believes the upsurge of wildfires in recent years is linked to a globally documented increase in temperatures. Warming trends play a role in drying out fuels and making them more explosive. Another factor appears to be increased air convection; a warmer climate has more thunderstorms and that can mean more lightning-caused fires.
NASA photo of the Waldo Canyon Fire
As a Westerner I've seen what wildfire can do, I've seen the swaths of total devastation wildfires leave behind.
One more thing added to the scales as we weigh our continued patterns of energy use against the rapidly multiplying harmful effects resulting from our addiction to dirty fossil fuels.