“In some regions, like the Rocky Mountains, really, temperature is the driving force, but elsewhere variables like relative humidity can play a role. If one year is particularly moist, for example, in the Great Basin, Nevada, Utah area, then that will foster a lot of vegetation growth and then the following year all that vegetation can feed wildfires and their spread.”
She and other researchers examined 15 climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel is the leading international organization that measures climate change. The models predicted average temperature increases of between two and 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.
Loretta Mickley says her team’s research suggests that rising temperatures are linked to fire activity.
“So we found, as in the past, temperature is really driving the changes that we predict for the future.”
She says the measurements suggest that the chance of large wildfires will increase by two or three times. Currently, the fire season, the period when most fires take place, is a little over four months. Loretta Mickley says that, by 2050, it will be three weeks longer. She says in the Rocky Mountains, the area burned by fires could increase by as much as four times.
Fires do more than burn forests. Air quality is also harmed by the huge amounts of smoke produced. In the past 20 years, air quality in many parts of the United States has improved greatly because of federal laws and better technologies. But, Loretta Mickley says, air pollution is an unexpected result of longer lasting, widespread wildfires.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25