“The study, published this month in the journal Science Advances, found that the extreme weather conditions that stoke wildfires around the world are happening on more days each year, causing fire seasons in different regions to overlap more”
““If a fire season is increasing and eventually overlapping, it will shrink the window of opportunity to help each other in terms of firefighting,” said Cong Yin, a climate scientist at the University of California, Merced, who led the new study. “These changes are attributable to climate change, so we need to mitigate climate change if we want to avoid this future.””
“Dr. Yin and his collaborators used weather data from 1979 to 2024 and computer modeling to assess how many days per year different regions of the world had severe fire weather, when and where it overlapped, and what factors were responsible”
““Global warming is increasing the synchronicity of fire extremes at the global scale, that’s the main message,” said Andreia Ribeiro, a climate scientist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Germany who was not involved in the study. “This is quite important for the management of firefighting resources.””
““We haven’t yet seen the full impact of climate change on fire because we’ve been quite successful in managing fire risk,” said Francesca Di Giuseppe, a meteorologist at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. “But the projections are for increased fire weather, even in moderate scenarios. So, whether our approaches are sustainable remains to be seen.””
““You can only fight so much fire.””
“Diversifying sources of firefighting crews and equipment, investing in more local firefighting resources that can quickly fight ignitions, and mitigating fire risk by managing flammable vegetation, building fire breaks and making homes more resilient to fire can all help states and countries stay ahead of the curve”