In case you missed it, on top of a pandemic, the threat of murder hornets and a presidential debate seemingly written for Saturday Night Live, the year 2020 has also provided a series of intense wildfires raging across the West Coast – and humans may be to blame.
No, I am not just talking about a random couple who went a little too intense with their gender reveal. The real underlying cause of the increase and ferocity of forest fires, and all weather events in general, has been building for decades, is man-made, and is practically irreversible. It is called climate change.
Before you write this off as another hippie blogpost about the importance of using a reusable water bottle and saving the turtles, hear me out. The number of wildfires has more than doubled since 1984, with each fire averaging longer, more intense burn periods every year. Many scientists attribute this trend to climate change, as the increase in Earth’s global temperature causes hotter and drier climate conditions that fuel flames.
According to an ongoing study conducted by NASA, Earth’s average global temperature has risen by about 1 degree Celsius since 1880, with about two-thirds of this increase occurring since 1975. While 1 degree doesn’t seem that significant, the global temperature represents the average temperature of the planet’s entire surface and requires a vast amount of heat to warm the land, oceans, and atmosphere by even a little. For reference, the average global temperature has only risen 7 degrees Celsius since the Last Glacial Maximum, otherwise known as the Ice Age.
“We have entered a ‘feast or famine’ kind of deal,” said Dr. Robert Mark Simpson, a professor of Geography at UTM. “The planet is warming up – more evaporation and water getting into the air means that clouds need more water to form … wet climates become wetter and dry climates become dryer.”
Much of the west coast in the United States falls under a Mediterranean climate, meaning that summers are prone to being hot and dry while winters receive long rains. “The Southwestern U.S. is unique,” Dr. Simpson said. He explained that usually the Western edge of North America receives heavy rains from monsoons off the Pacific Ocean; however, due to climate anomalies, likely due to increased atmospheric temperatures and disproportioned moisture in the air, this year the monsoon was absent, only exacerbating the already dry climate.
Furthermore, Dr. Simpson said that the warming atmospheric conditions have caused storms to begin forming at higher elevation levels. “The storms form so high that any rain produced evaporates before it even hits the ground,” he said. However, lightning can still strike from extremely high altitudes, thus igniting the already dry ground. “Once they get initiated, they perpetuate themselves until a major rain puts them out,” Dr. Simpson said.
Warmer global temperatures, besides making the ground drier and more flammable, has also been linked to causing more intense wildfires by causing snow to melt faster and contributing to the spread of insects known to weaken or kill trees, such as the mountain pine beetle. Both bolsters the amount of free kindling that fires feed on.
An increase in the number and ferocity of forest fires not only means trouble for the planet, but for the health of U.S. citizens as well. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, wildfire smoke contains complex fine particles produced when wood and other organic materials burn; these particles have the potential of penetrating the lungs when breathed in, thus causing a range of health concerns including burning eyes, runny nose, and increased likelihood of severe heart and lung conditions.
Most of Northern California, Oregon, and parts of Washington are still under an air quality advisory, with most cities seeing air pollution levels in the unhealthy, very unhealthy, and hazardous range. In mid to late September, numerous cities along the east coast, including New York City, reported seeing smoke from the California wildfires, causing alarmingly bright orange and red sunsets. Meteorologists as far as the Netherlands also reported spotting plumbs of smoke from the U.S. west coast.
“Smoke coming from the Western U.S., so much of it gets so high that very fine particles from the smoke enter and ride the Circumpolar vortex,” Dr. Simpson said. The Polar Jetstream is a powerful river of wind high in the atmosphere, transporting massive amounts of moisture and warm and cold air throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
Luckily for those living on the U.S. East Coast, the smoke emitted from the West Coast wildfires has remained too high in the atmosphere, about 10,000 to 20,000 feet above ground level, to pose any health risk from breathing in any smoke particles. Dr. Simpson assured that there is no immediate health risk to the people of Martin, just individuals where the smoke is dense enough to fall to the surface. Still, “It is a testament to how much smoke is produced. … when the smoke is very dense and that high off the ground, the refracted light creates those orange and red colors,” Dr. Simpson said. It kind of ruins the beauty of recent sunsets when you realize it is the result of thousands of smoke particles filtering from the burning West Coast countryside.
Although the current smoke levels are only extremely harmful for those living close to the blazes, that doesn’t mean the East Coast is free from the implications of climate-induced forest fires. Forests along the Appalachian Mountains are becoming increasingly flammable due to drier weather conditions, one example being the wildfire that devastated the Smoky Mountains in 2016. Additionally, altered weather and Jetstream patterns caused by the warming of the earth could mean higher levels of smoke would propagate further downwards, eventually becoming a health risk for those not even close to the flames.
So, although we didn’t start the fire, is there any way we can stop the world from burning? Unfortunately, most professional sources, including Dr. Simpson, climate change has reached a point where its effects can no longer be reversed, only lessened. “It may be too late,” Dr. Simpson said. “It’s like if you place a frog in water and slowly turn up the heat – it never knows it’s being boiled.”
Turns out we have been boiling ourselves for quite some time. Dr. Simpson said most of the earth’s warming has occurred over the past 150 years, mostly in response to the Industrial Revolution increasing the amount of carbon being released into the air. Recent studies conducted on ancient air bubbles trapped in ice reveal that the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are higher than they have ever been in the past 400,000 years, surpassing 400 parts per million in 2013 for the first time in recorded history.
The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has been monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since 1958. The Keeling Curve is a graph that charts the seasonal and annual buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from data collected at the observatory. The curve shows that, since 1959 alone, the first recorded data was recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory, average concentrations have arisen from 316ppm to 411ppm in 2018. While carbon dioxide within the atmosphere is a natural process, scientists say this steep of an increase in such a short amount of time is clearly a cause for concern.
“At this point, the atmosphere is going to do what it’s going to do,” Dr. Simpson said. “Even if we went cold turkey on carbon dioxide- which means we couldn’t do pretty much anything – carbon in the air has a lifespan of 100 years, so we would still be in the same situation … we need to acknowledge that we have entered a new environmental paradigm.”
While the crazy weather and intense fire conditions are here to stay, that doesn’t mean all is hopeless. A possible solution? “It’s nice to go to all alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind energy,” Dr. Simpson said. “While it can’t all be carbon neutral because you have to get steam engines to make supplies, the goal is to reduce carbon emissions and not make more of a problem.” Another important step is to advocate and support corporate companies going carbon neutral and carbon negative, although this is still a new concept and can lead to other issues.
As for preventing severe forest fires, the best solutions include allowing government forest conservation agencies to conduct prescribed burnings to reduce the levels of flammable underbrush in a safe and controlled way.
2020 has certainly thrown a lot of curve balls, but we as a people are at a crucial point in history where we have the power to prevent further damage both to ourselves and the planet. Amidst the chaos and anxiety of current issues, there is a chance for healing and prevention.
