The age of western wildfires

Climate Central a non-profit organization that conducts scientific research on climate change and informs the public of key findings recently published a report on September 19, titled ‘The Age of Western Wildfires’.   According to the report the 2012 wildfire season isn’t over yet and the year is shaping up to be one of the worst on record in the western United States.

Among the report’s findings are:

1. The number of large and very large fires on Forest Service land is increasingly dramatically. Compared to the average year in the 1970s, in the past decade there were: seven times more fires greater than 10,000 acres each year, nearly five times more fires larger than 25,000 acres each year, and twice as many fires over 1,000 acres each year, with an average of more than 100 per year from 2002 through 2011, compared with less than 50 during the 1970s.
2. In some states the increase in wildfires is even more dramatic. Since the 1970s the average number of fires over 1,000 acres each year has nearly quadrupled in Arizona and Idaho, and has doubled in California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming.
3. On average, wildfires burn twice as much land area each year as they did 40 years ago. In the past decade, the average annual burn area on Forest Service land in the West has exceeded 2 million acres - more than all of Yellowstone National Park.