Climate change has doubled Western U.S. forest fires

Forest fire in the Rocky Mountains.

A new study says that human-induced climate change has doubled the area affected by forest fires in the U.S. West over the last 30 years.

According to the study, since 1984 heightened temperatures and resulting aridity have caused fires to spread across an additional 16,000 square miles than they otherwise would have -- an area larger than the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

The authors warn that further warming will increase fire exponentially in coming decades. The study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"No matter how hard we try, the fires are going to keep getting bigger, and the reason is really clear," said study coauthor Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Climate is really running the show in terms of what burns. We should be getting ready for bigger fire years than those familiar to previous generations."

Read the Science News story - “Climate change has doubled Western U.S. forest fires.”