{"id":36186,"date":"2013-05-23T21:36:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T01:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=36186"},"modified":"2013-05-23T21:36:59","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T01:36:59","slug":"climate-change-and-wildfire-research-examines-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/climate-change-and-wildfire-research-examines-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change And Wildfire — Research Examines Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Changes in the climate are intimately connected with wildfires, both causing them and being being caused by them. Recent research has estimated that wildfires will increase by around 50% across most of the US, and by as much as 100% in the West, by 2050, as a result of climate change. And with this increase in the frequency\/extent of wildfires, greenhouse gas emissions will rise too.<\/p>\n

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Image Credit: Wild Fire<\/a> via Flick CC<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And now, new research, recently published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management<\/em>, has synthesized “recent findings on the interactions between fire and climate and outlines future research needs.” Written by research meteorologists Yongqiang Liu and Scott Goodrick from the Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) and Warren Heilman from the Northern Research Station, the report focuses on the effects that emissions from wildfires will have on long-term atmospheric conditions.<\/p>\n

“While research has historically focused on fire-weather interactions, there is increasing attention paid to fire-climate interactions,” says Liu, lead author and team leader with the SRS Center for Forest Disturbance Science<\/a>. “Weather, the day-to-day state of the atmosphere in a region, influences individual fires within a fire season. In contrast, when we talk about fire climate, we’re looking at the statistics of weather over a certain period. Fire climate sets atmospheric conditions for fire activity in longer time frames and larger geographic scales.”<\/p>\n