Citizens and scientists around the world are pointing to the California wildfires as proof that the global warming exists, but the matter is far from resolved.
According to GreenandSave.com atmospheric scientists at the renowned Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have predicted that warmer climates are in store. Warmer weather leads to drier underbrush — underbrush that is easily burned by nature and by man.
Fire, whether natural or man-made, leads to an increase in organic carbon aerosols, much like the emissions of volcanic activity. These particles reflect sunlight. In the case of volcanic activity, this causes global temperatures to drop for several years or more after a large eruption. However, according to USGS, volcanic eruptions actually temporarily reduce the effects of global warming by keeping sea-level rise in check.
Scientists tell us that industrial activity is causing increased carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere. This heat melts the glaciers, thus causing the sea level to rise. This has been occurring for the last century but this rise has not been a constant. In the one to two years following volcanic activity, scientists observed decreases in the rate of sea-level rise, but after two years the sea level began to rise quickly as the volcanic effects wore off. (Since 1950, during which time several eruptions have occurred, the sea level has risen an average of seven-tenths of an inch per year.)
The article goes on to state that despite the clear effect of volcanic eruptions on world climate, volcanoes are still not powerful enough to offset the effect of global warming caused by human burning of fossil fuels.
In October, 2007, the Business and Media Institute reported that CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Tom Foreman warn that global warming may be to blame for Southern California fires, although California wildfires have been a phenomenon that has occurred long before the theory of anthropogenic global warming was conceived.
At WorldClimateReport.org, Colorado University preeminent scholar, Roger Pielke Jr., called a paper by A. L. Westerling (Scripps Institute of Oceanography) relating a dramatic increase in western forest fires to regional warming and changes in the onset of snowmelt, “a useful paper that adds to our knowledge and hopefully will stimulate further research on the integrated effects of climate-society-policy.” Pielke went on to say, “At the same time I can envisage the paper being used simply as a caricature in the global warming debate — Global Warming Causes Forest Fires! — but that would be a shame because fire policy is more complex than that.
“Whether the changes observed in western hydro-climate and wildfire are the result of greenhouse gas-induced global warming or only an unusual natural fluctuation, is presently unclear.”
The study of global warming and the effects of wildfire span a fairly short period of time — only about 30 years — and in the big picture, that’s merely a pixel. It’s clear that we need far more data, but many believe we are simply running out of time. If we wait a hundred more years while we collect this much-needed data, will we still have an atmosphere worth saving?
It’s easy to become alarmed, but as with most things, moderation seems to be the key. Scientific data quoted in Westerling’s paper, states that wildfire frequency has increased four-fold since 1986 beyond the period from 1970 to 1986, but that there is no difference in the average date of snowmelt initiation between these two periods. There is correlation between wildfires and warmer springs and summers, and in the west this is the case. The temperatures of these two seasons has gone up each year by about one degree Celsius, thus increasing evaporation and making for drier conditions. Drier means more flammable.
If we look beyond the 30 or so years, as was done in the study by Edward Cook and colleagues to reconstruct the drought patterns back to 800 A.D., we find that current drought conditions are not nearly as noteworthy as today’s news would suggest. In the collaborative effort they wrote, “Compared to earlier mega-droughts that are reconstructed to have occurred around AD 936, 1034, 1150, and 1253, however, the current drought does not stand out as an extreme event, because it has not yet lasted nearly as long.”
Their study also finds a general decline in western drought over the last millennium, with the recent era looking pretty much like the long-term average.
In support of the theory of a long-term drought season, SEAS predicts that the areas of wildfires in the west will increase as much as 50 percent by 2050 as a result of increasing temperatures.
As of today, satellite maps show smoke and haze from fires across the US from California to Florida. SEAS scientists agree that fires lead to an increase in organic carbon aerosols by about 40 percent. Smoke from Los Angeles-area fires caused enough haze in Colorado that nearly 30 people dialed 911 to report smoke. The state health department issued an air- quality warning and cautioned the elderly and those with breathing ailments to stay indoors.