why have wildfires increased in recent years?
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Western US wildfires on the rise While fire is a natural and essential part of these ecosystems, warming temperatures and drying soils—both tied to human-caused climate change—have contributed to observed increases in wildfire activity.
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2017: In 2017 there were 71,499 wildfires, compared to 65,575 wildfires in 2016, according to the NIFC. About 10 million acres were burned in 2017, compared with 5.4 million in 2016. The number of acres burned in 2017 was higher than the 10-year average.
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Wildfires Caused By Bad Environmental Policy Are Causing California Forests To Be Net CO2 Emitters. In the past two years, wildfires scorched 2.9 million acres in California, including five of the state's 20 deadliest fires killing 131 people.
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Most are caused by human activity, especially clearing lands for farming. The fires themselves are destructive and devastating, but their primary cause is more concerning, says Ane Alencar, the director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).
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The wildfires in Australia have burned a massive expanse of land. ... That's 5,000 square miles (an area about the size of Connecticut), more than the area of land that burned during 2019's devastating Amazon rainforest fires and 80 times larger than the total area burned in the 2019 California wildfires.
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Hot, dry weather combined with ongoing drought and strong winds have created the perfect conditions for fire to spread quickly. Bushfires can originate from both human activity and natural causes - with lightning being the predominant natural source.
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['Climate - global warming is increasing temperatures by around 0.2°C every 10 years. ... ', 'Technology - improvements in technology have increased the amount of food available. ... ', 'Loss of farmland - the growth of the biofuel market is taking up valuable farmland which is then not used for food.']
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Fueled by drought, an unprecedented buildup of dry vegetation and extreme winds, the size and intensity of these wildfires caused the loss of more than 100 lives, destroyed thousands of homes and exposed millions of urban and rural Californians to unhealthy air.
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More than 100 U.S. firefighters, including dozens from California, have traveled to Australia over the last month to help combat the country's wildfires that have consumed more than 12.5 million acres of vegetation. ... Twenty of those firefighters were assembled by the Angeles National Forest Services.
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Young forests take up a bit more, but this is largely an accident of history. The extra carbon uptake we get from having a relatively youthful forest will diminish as that forest ages.
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Wildfires are a natural part of the ecosystem in Australia. ... “There has been a long-term increase in extreme fire weather, and in the length of the fire season, across large parts of Australia,” according to the climate report. These fires may not be 100 percent attributable to climate change.
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The fires started in various ways: some by lightning, some by human actions, including arson. However, it's the climate conditions that provide ample fuel for the fires to grow and spread. Before the fires ignited, Australia was already enduring its hottest and driest year on record.
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Nearly 85 percent* of wildland fires in the United States are caused by humans. Human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, equipment use and malfunctions, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson. Lightning is one of the two natural causes of fires.
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Deliberate deforestation? The recent increase in the number of fires in the Amazon is directly related to intentional deforestation and not the result of an extremely dry season, according to the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam).
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When they calculate total global CO2 output, scientists don't include all wildfire emissions as net emissions, though, because some of the CO2 is offset by renewed forest growth in the burned areas. As a result, they estimate that wildfires make up 5 to 10 percent of annual global CO2 emissions each year.
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Unseasonably high temperatures and drought over the last three months have contributed to the conditions that have allowed the fires to proliferate. ... And in Australia we've just experienced record high temperatures," Mark Howden, director of the Climate Change Institute at Australian National University, told Reuters.
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Putting Climate Change over Land Management According to Australian Capital Territory foresters, climate change isn't to blame for Australia's fires, but “long unburnt fuels in national parks.” The same could be said of many of California's recent wildfires, as previously reported here.