Wildfires and Climate Change

Reposted from The New York Times 

(Yosemite fire)

Increasing incursions by humans into forests, coupled with altered forest ecology and climate change, will make fires bigger and more destructive, with implications for air quality as well as homes and infrastructure.

“We face the increased risk of fires almost everywhere,” said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, who is co-chairman of a working group for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Next March, the working group of which Dr. Field is co-chairman at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. group, will publish a report that discusses wildfires as part of a broader look at the effects of climate change and the vulnerabilities of certain areas.

When large fires burn, they can have serious international consequences. In a sense, Dr. Field said, they are a “teachable moment,” showing the risks of climate change.

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