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Wildfires may Increase Due to Global Warming in Coming Decades
SEAS Senior Research Fellow Jennifer Logan led the study.
In their pioneering work, Logan and her collaborators investigated the consequences of climate change on future forest fires and on air quality in the western United States.
"Warmer temperatures can dry out underbrush, leading to a more serious conflagration once a fire is started by lightening or human activity," said Logan. "Because smoke and other particles from fires adversely affect air quality, an increase in wildfires could have large impacts on human health," she added.
Using a series of models, the scientists predict that the geographic area typically burned by wildfires in the western United States could increase by about 50 percent by the 2050s due mainly to rising temperatures.
The greatest increases in area burned (75-175 percent) would occur in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains.
In addition, because of extra burning throughout the western US, one important type of smoke particle, organic carbon aerosols, would increase, on average, by about 40 percent during the roughly half-century period.
To conduct the research, the team first examined a 25-year record of observed meteorology and fire statistics to identify those meteorological factors that could best predict area burned for each ecosystem in the western US.
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