California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century.
California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century.
Researchers in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine have conducted a thorough analysis of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection wildfire statistics from 2000 to 2019, comparing them with data from 1920 to 1999. They learned that the annual burn season has lengthened in the past two decades and that the yearly peak has shifted from August to July. The team’s findings are the subject of a study published today in the open-access journal Nature Scientific Reports.
The study is a focused examination of fire frequency, burned area and myriad drivers of the catastrophically destructive events. The team found that the number of hot spots – places with severe fire risk – has grown significantly in recent years, fueled by higher annual mean temperatures, greater vapor pressure deficit (lack of air moisture), drought, and an elevated chance of blazes being sparked through such human causes as power line disruptions, construction, transportation, campfires, discarded cigarettes and fireworks.
Read more at: University of California - Irvine
A brush fire in the summer of 2017 consumed large swaths of dried out vegetation on the hillsides of Ventura County, a place that emerged as a hot spot for wildfires over the past two decades, according to a new study by UCI researchers in Nature Scientific Reports. (Photo Credit: Amir AghaKouchak / UCI)
