“This is looking like the type of year that might occur more often in the future,” said A. Park Williams, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.
Severe wildfire seasons like the one that has devastated California this fall may occur more frequently because of climate change, scientists say.
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| A Warming California, a Future of More Fire. |
The reason is an expected impact of climate change in California: increasing year-to-year variability in temperature and precipitation that will create greater contrast between drought years and wet years. And that can lead to much greater fire risk.
That contrast has occurred this decade in the state, where years of drought were followed last winter by very wet weather that led to a bumper crop of grasses and other vegetation.
Read the story by Henry Fountain in The New York Times - “In a Warming California, a Future of More Fire.”
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