Montreal Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada WildFire. Published July 13, 2015.
Hat tip to reader Alexander Ac.
Geophysicist Henry Pollack has a ready answer when someone says to him, “There was global warming before any people were around, therefore, global warming can’t be caused by humans.”
He asks, ” There were forest fires long before man was here. Would you then say it’s not possible that humans cause any forest fires?”
More Below:
In a vicious cycle, wildfires are also making climate change worse, a study finds.
Increasingly hot and dry climates, the result of global climate change, have led to a worsening of wildfires around the world, according to new research. In turn, wildfires are aggravating climate change by killing trees that could absorb carbon in the atmosphere.The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, finds that fire season has gotten longer for more than quarter of the Earth’s vegetated surface from 1979 to 2013. Overall, across the globe, fire weather season increased by nearly 19%. The trend occurred on all continents where wildfires occur except Australia.
Would add your post from last April about fires in Siberia: http://climatecrocks.com/2015/04/16/spring-is-here-siberia-already-in-flames/
Similarly to Dr Pollack’s response, I was arguing with someone who claimed ‘climate has been changing for half a billion years’, and my retort was ‘NAME something that hasn’t changed in half a billion years. For gosh sakes, the UNIVERSE has changed in half a billion years!’
2015 has been an extraordinary year for wildfire in Canada. Some highlights:
To date since 01/01/15 approximately 3,334,553 hectares of wildland have burned.
Expressed in square miles: 12,874.8 sq.mi.
Expressed in acres: 8,239,860 acres
Source: See summary data here: http://www.ciffc.ca/firewire/current.php
Number of Canadian wildland fires in 2014: 2,676
Number of Canadian wildland fires in 2015 (to date): 5,208 (approx. double the number with half of the fire season still ahead.)
Compare the 3.3 million hectares burned this year to the 25 year average of 1.09 million hectares per annum.
2015 to date has had about 300% of normal area consumed by fire.
A quick summary sheet for Canada wildfire, updated weekly, is hosted here:
http://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/report