Projecting The Future Of Wildfires In A Drier Southeast
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Tinder-dry conditions that have resulted from months with little to no rain and toasty fall temperatures have allowed the fires to reach unusual heights. “We have California wildfires in North Carolina,” Gov. Pat McCrory said earlier this month. With all signs pointing to continued dry conditions — possibly through the winter thanks to a La Niña — those wildfires could burn for weeks or months and the risks that new fires will start is high.
But the picture for future regional drought and wildfire risk as global temperatures rise is a murkier one, experts like Prestemon said. This year’s exceptional conditions may not become the norm, but because of rising temperatures, they may be more likely to occur in the future when the right ingredients come together.
Nearly three dozen large wildfires are burning across seven states in the Southeast, charring a total of more than 100,000 acres. The fires in the worst-hit states, Georgia and North Carolina, have burned about 45,000 acres in each state. Thousands of firefighters have descended on the region to quash and contain the flames at the cost of millions of dollars. In the meantime, residents even hundreds of miles away have had to deal with air quality alerts and curb their outdoor activities as shifting winds spread the fires’ smoke.
While the Southeast is no stranger to wildfires, the number so far this fall is “many, many more than what we normally have,” Chip Konrad, director of the Southeast Regional Climate Center, said. And the sheer scale of some of them is far larger than is typical for the Appalachians.
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When drought occurs in the future, that added temperature boost means such droughts will be worse, meaning any fire that does start is going to have more fuel so “it’s going to be worse,” Prestemon’s co-author, Don McKenzie, of the Forest Service’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab, said. But it doesn’t mean that years like this one become the norm, he cautioned. In the more immediate future, the dry conditions and accompanying wildfires will likely be around for several more months. With a weak La Niña in place, the odds favor drier-than-normal winter conditions across the southern tier of the U.S. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s drought outlook expects the drought in the Southeast to persist and expand.
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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/warmer-future-southeastern-wildfires-20912
