The Burning Season

As Martin Kaste reports on NPR, the fire season normally winds down in September. Not this year. A combination of drought and other factors, including considerable die-off of trees due to bark beetle-infestation, is contributing to a prolonged fire season in the West that shows no end in sight. This year, Kaste reports, wildland fires have already burned some 8 million acres -- nearly twice the ten-year average -- and the acreage "has been increasing steadily year on year."

Earlier in the year, research published in the online version of the journal Science concluded that the uptick in both strength and number of wildfires is consistent with a changing climate. Dr. Anthony Westerling led the research while at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was interviewed on NPR's Science Friday back in July. You can hear the segment here.

The terrible irony of the increase in forest fires is that the problem could be self-reinforcing; that is, as the fires burn they loose more carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating the condition that led to the increasing fires in the first place.