UCLA study warns record wildfire seasons are “only the beginning”

A new study from the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) warned that climate change is mostly driven by human activities is the main problem triggering wildfire seasons records and that they will get worse in the coming years. The researchers referred to US geological survey data showing an increase in astronomy in the amount of land burned every year by forest fires.

This study was published in the journal Pride of the National Academy of Sciences on November 9; It specifies the use of AI and data collected for decades to explore the relationship between climate change and an increased risk of forest fires in US West. The team found that these countries might have passed the “critical threshold” where climate change caused by human activity was mainly responsible for weather changes that increased the risk of fire.

This key finding is a climate metric called the vapor pressure deficit (VPD), which is described as “the amount of moisture that can be held by air when fulfilled with a minus amount of moisture in the air.”

The higher the VPD, the researchers explained, the more air humidity can be attractive from plants and soil, increasing the risk of fire. From 1979 to 2020, this study estimates that only 32 percent of the increase in the level of VPD in the West US that occur naturally, with the remaining 68 percent is likely to be caused by climate change driven by humans.

Using USGS data, research reported that from 1984 to 2000, 11 states in US West averaged 1.69 million hectares of land burned by forest fires every year. From 2001 to 2018, the average jumped to 3.35 hectares, and 2020 drastically exceeded which with a large 6.8 million hectares.

The writer who matches Rong Fu’s research explains:

I am worried that the fire extinguisher in recent years is only the beginning of what will come, because of climate change, and our society is not ready for a quick increase in weather that contributes to forest fires in West America […] that the Western United States seems to be It has passed a critical threshold – that human induced heating is now more responsible for increasing the deficit of the vapor pressure rather than natural variations in atmospheric circulation. Our analysis shows this change has occurred since the beginning of the 21st century, far earlier than we expected.