on average now burn about 12,000 square miles (31,000 square kilometers) yearly, about the size of Maryland. “It’s not just the California problem or Australia problem. “It makes you think about climate change and also how it essentially could affect, you know, anywhere,” Bhatia said. But if it continues, it will no longer be as funny. Ronak Bhatia, who moved from California to Illinois for college in 2018 and now lives in Chicago, said at first it seemed like a joke: wildfire smoke following him and his friends from the West Coast. “We have to learn to live with fire and smoke, that’s the new reality,” Flannigan said. Fire seasons are getting longer, starting earlier and lasting later because of warmer weather, he said. Then you add more lightning strikes from more storms, some of which are dry lightning strikes, said Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. Numerous studies have linked climate change to increases in North American fires because global warming is increasing extreme weather, especially drought and mostly in the West.Īs the atmosphere dries, it sucks moisture out of plants, creating more fuel that burns easier, faster and with greater intensity. ![]() “We’re seeing, especially across the West, big increases in smoke exposure and reduction in air quality that are attributable to increase in fire activity.” Park Williams, a UCLA bioclimatologist who studies fire and water. “A year like this could happen with or without climate change, but warming temperatures just made it a lot more probable,” said A. Even before July, traditionally the busiest fire month for the country, Canada has set a record for most area burned with 31,432 square miles (81,409 square kilometers), which is nearly 15% higher than the old record. Several scientists told the AP that the problem of smoke and wildfires will progressively worsen until the world significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which has not happened despite years of international negotiations and lofty goals.įires in North America are generally getting worse, burning more land. “To some extent they’re just not, they’re not wild. ![]() “We can’t really call them wildfires anymore,” Francis said. It’s so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis. As Earth's climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. It’s an ever-moving baseline of worse and worse.”įILE - A jogger runs along McCovey Cove outside Oracle Park in San Francisco, under darkened skies from wildfire smoke on Sept. If we continue to warm the planet, we don’t settle into some new state. “Is this a new normal? No, it’s a new abnormal,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said. While many people exposed to bad air may be asking themselves if this is a “new normal,” several scientists told The Associated Press they specifically reject any such idea because the phrase makes it sound like the world has changed to a new and steady pattern of extreme events. Already wildfires are consuming three times more of the United States and Canada each year than in the 1980s and studies predict fire and smoke to worsen. This is just what happens on the West Coast,’ but it’s very much not normal here,” Kuchlbauer said.Īs Earth’s climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. “It’s been very apocalyptic feeling, because in California the dialogue is like, ‘Oh, it’s normal. They figured they left wildfire worries behind in California, but a Canada that’s burning from sea to warming sea brought one of the more visceral effects of climate change home to places that once seemed immune. ![]() Bomba had deja vu from San Francisco, where the air was so thick with smoke people had to mask up. Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college graduate in San Diego. It was smoke from wildfires, the odor of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. As smoky as the summer has been so far, scientists say it will likely be worse in future years because of climate change. A person walks along the shore of Lake Michigan as the downtown skyline is blanketed in haze from Canadian wildfires, June 27, 2023, in Chicago.
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