Fires Burning

By Tamino
22 August 2015

(Open Mind) – Here (shown as black dots) is the total acres burned by wildfire in Washington state each year, together with a blue dashed line showing the yearly average, since 2002.

The red dashed line is the acres burned by wildfires that are burning in Washington state RIGHT NOW. That’s not the yearly total, like the black dots show. It doesn’t include the fires that have burned this year but were already extinguished. And it doesn’t include the acres yet to burn. Many people are wondering, “why is the wildfire season so horrible?”

It’s global warming, stupid.

But Matt Pearce just had to write an article for the LA Times pushing the idea that it’s not unusual. And Cliff Mass updated his blog post to say “we are finally at normal … and according to their projections, we should stay that way…” [more]

It’s global warming, stupid

Technorati Tags: wildfire,forest fire,global warming,climate change

Here’s what’s coming

By Claire Rigby
19 August 2015

São Paulo, Brazil (Los Angeles Times) – Officials in São Paulo state have announced that the water shortage in the city of the same name is now "critical," with multimillion-dollar emergency construction projects so far failing to ease the situation.

The announcement was the first time the state government officially recognized the severity of the water crisis and permits the suspension of licenses that allow agriculture, industry and other private concerns to draw directly from area water supplies.

The statement, issued Tuesday, comes at the height of Brazil's dry season, with water levels in São Paulo city's two main reservoirs extremely low. The Cantareira reservoir is below 17% of capacity; the Alto Tiete reservoir, which at this point in 2013 was at 60.9% of capacity, is at just 15.4%.

Southeastern Brazil is facing its worst drought in more than 80 years. The city of São Paulo, which usually averages a scant-enough 1.4 inches of rain in August, has had scarcely a trace this month. It is the largest city in South America, with a population of about 20 million.

Intended as quick fixes to a problem that critics say has been brewing for years, civil engineering emergency "mega-projects" undertaken by the Sao Paulo state government have run into problems, exacerbating the situation and helping to trigger this week's announcement.

The first project, at a cost of $8.3 million, was inaugurated June 29 by Gov. Geraldo Alckmin and connects the River Guaio to the Taiacupeba Reservoir via a pipeline intended to carry about 265 gallons of water a second into São Paulo city's water supply. But the pumps have been idle because of insufficient flow in the small river as a result of dry weather.

Another megaproject, the largest underway, is expected to carry water from Billings Reservoir into the Alto Tiete system via a nearly 7-mile pipeline. Originally scheduled to begin operation in May, work on the $37.4-million project didn't start until May 4, with its launch date first pushed back to August and then to October.

The "critical situation" statement says that "special measures should be taken to secure the availability of water in a safe and efficient manner." That opens the way for the possible suspension of licenses that authorize businesses, agricultural enterprises and private entities to draw directly from São Paulo's rivers and reservoirs and groundwater via artesian wells. [more]

Drought drives water shortage to critical stage in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Technorati Tags: drought,freshwater depletion,Brazil,South America,agriculture,infrastructure failure,global warming,climate change

Going Dry

By Sean Breslin
10 August 2015

(weather.com) – One of America's 10 largest cities is swiftly losing its river, and the loss is having major effects on the ecosystem around it.

The San Jose Mercury News said eight miles of the 14-mile long Guadalupe River that runs through San Jose, California, has now dried up, another victim of the years-long California drought that is already regarded as the worst in the Golden State's recorded history.

Even worse, the city had finally taken steps to restore wildlife to the river after years of neglect, but with no water left in the stream, all those fish and birds are either dead or gone again. Because there's no state agency that keeps a count of the fish and other species, there's no way to know if they migrated elsewhere or just died.

"I'm heartbroken," Leslee Hamilton, executive director of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, told the Mercury News. "We've been seeing a great increase in the number of birds and wildlife in the area. The timing of this is just devastating."

The reasons for the disappearance of more than half the Guadalupe are both man-made and natural. The drought has depleted much of the state's water, and that has led to lower lake and river levels all over California.

But there's another reason why parts of the Guadalupe are dry, the Mercury News said. When water levels go down, state lawmakers must approve additional water releases from reservoirs to keep the rivers flowing. Environmentalists want the water releases to continue in areas where animals are in danger of going extinct.

However, others say humans are more important, and in such dire circumstances, we should worry less about saving the animals. […]

Underground, there are even more problems. According to the Washington Post, more groundwater is being used as a substitution for the water farmers were pulling from the rivers and lakes that are now dried up. As that groundwater is extracted, the land sinks, and the aquifer beneath the surface can't be replenished, the report added. It's causing serious, irreversible damage to the water table and the land on which California's residents live.

As of Aug. 4, 46 percent of California is in the worst category of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Most of San Jose is in "extreme drought," the second-worst drought category.

"Since January, San Jose has measured 3.43 inches of rain, which is 6.46 inches below average," said weather.com meteorologist Linda Lam. "Below-average rainfall was recorded for January through April, and this January was the only January on record to see no measurable rainfall. The average rainfall in January is 2.99 inches, one of the wettest months of the year." [more]

More Than Half of San Jose's Guadalupe River Is Gone

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By Paul Rogers
8 August 2015

SAN JOSE – On a recent afternoon at Guadalupe River Park in the heart of downtown, a couple strolled hand-in-hand, a mother pushed her toddler in a stroller, and soft breezes rustled the leaves of stately trees near the home of the San Jose Sharks.

But something was missing: the river.

The river that runs through America's 10th-largest city has dried up, shriveling a source of civic pride that had welcomed back trout, salmon, beavers and other wildlife after years of restoration efforts. Over the past two months, large sections of the Guadalupe have become miles of cracked, arid gray riverbed. Fish and other wildlife are either missing or dead, casualties of California's relentless drought.

"I'm heartbroken," said Leslee Hamilton, executive director of the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, a nonprofit that runs educational and community programs along the river.

"We've been seeing a great increase in the number of birds and wildlife in the area," she said. "The timing of this is just devastating."

The Guadalupe is in worse shape than many California waterways, but it is hardly alone.

The state's rivers and creeks are withering and in some cases disappearing entirely after four years of historically dry weather -- the focus of the latest installment of this newspaper's series, "A State of Drought."

In the agriculture-rich Central Valley, the drought has slowed plans to release more water to the San Joaquin River to bring the over-tapped waterway back to life. Up north in Humboldt County, salmon are at risk of going high and dry in the tributaries of the Eel River.

"It's grim," said Matt Clifford, an attorney with Trout Unlimited, a nonprofit that has its California headquarters in Emeryville. "This is not good for wildlife or fish."

Across the state, environmentalists are battling state, federal and local water agencies, arguing that more water should be released from reservoirs to save species in danger of extinction. In many cases, farmers and cities are clamoring for the same water, arguing that people must come first in an emergency.

"At the end of the day, there just is not enough water to maintain sufficient releases," said Michelle Leicester, an environmental scientist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Nobody has an exact count of how many streams have run dry. Although some California rivers have gauges, they're used mostly to monitor floods, not low water levels. And many remote creeks and tributaries that are vital to fish have no gauges installed by state or federal agencies at all.

"Every stream is slowly going dry. But it's tough to give names and numbers," said Gordon Becker, a fisheries scientist with the Center for Ecosystem Management and Restoration, a nonprofit in Oakland. "The system is hopelessly inadequate." [more]

River that runs through downtown San Jose goes dry; fish and wildlife suffer

Technorati Tags: California,North America,drought,freshwater depletion,fish decline,wildlife,agriculture,global warming,climate change

Getting Hot

By Jason Samenow
17 August 2015

(Washington Post) – For planet Earth, no other month was likely as hot as this past July in records that date back to the late 1800s. And the global is well on its way to having its hottest year on record.

Both NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) have published data that show it was the hottest July on record. Since July is on average the planet’s warmest time of year, it’s fair to say temperatures this past month were at or very close to their highest point in the history of instrumental records.

NASA’s map of July temperatures shows large areas of much warmer than normal temperatures in the Pacific Northwest, western Europe, central Asia and Africa. It also reveals the telltale signature of the powerful El Nino event, portrayed by the much warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific.

The heat from El Nino not only manifested itself over the tropical Pacific, but also likely boosted temperatures in other areas due to its ripple effects on global weather patterns. In sum, NASA data reveal July 2015’s average temperature edged July 2011 as the warmest on record(by 0.02 degrees), making back-to-back months of record-setting temperatures after a toasty June. Every month this year has ranked among the top four warmest in NASA’s analysis. [more]

July was likely Earth’s hottest month in what’s destined to be Earth’s hottest year

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By Tamino
15 August 2015

(Open Mind) – Now that NASA has released their data updated through July, we know that in that data set, this July was the hottest July on record with a temperature anomaly of 0.75 deg.C, i.e. it was 0.75 deg.C above “climatology” (which is what’s usual for the given month). It’s not the hottest temperature anomaly in the data set, however; that record still belongs to January 2007, at 0.96 deg.C above climatology.

Yet it does seem that this July, while not the hottest temperature anomaly on record, is the hottest month on record.

Every year, the global average temperature goes through an annual cycle — not just the temperature at a given location. In the northern hemisphere we tend to be hottest in July and coldest in January, but in the southern hemisphere the seasons are reversed, hottest in January and coldest in July. The seasons are definitely hemisphere-dependent.

But what about the global average? My first instinct, many years ago, was that earth would, overall, be hottest in January simply because we’re closer to the sun (at the perihelion of our orbit). But it turns out (as was quickly pointed out by a blog commenter) earth is actually hottest in July. That’s because when the southern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun in January, all that solar heat mainly strikes ocean, which dominates the southern hemisphere rather than land. The thermal inertia of the oceans is much greater than that of the land masses, so it heats up more slowly, and just doesn’t get that hot even at the peak of summer.

But in July, it’s the northern hemisphere that’s tilted toward the sun. The lower thermal inertia of land (mostly in the northern hemisphere rather than the southern) means it can heat up quickly, so the northern hemisphere reaches higher temperatures at its summer peak than the southern hemisphere does at its summer peak.

Why not translate those temperature anomalies into actual temperature estimates? [more]

Hottest Month

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,NASA,heat wave

Short Water

By William Yardley
18 July 2015

(Los Angeles Times) – The Colorado River begins as snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains and ends 1,450 miles south in Mexico after making a final sacrifice to the United States: water for the farm fields in this powerhouse of American produce.

Throughout the winter, perfect heads of romaine, red-and-green lettuce, spinach and broccoli are whisked from the warm desert soil here onto refrigerated trucks that deliver them to grocery stores across the continent. If you eat a green salad between Thanksgiving and April, whether in Minnesota, Montreal or Modesto, odds are good that some of it was grown in or around Yuma.

The summer freshness on all of those winter plates reflects the marvel of engineering the Colorado has become — and why managing the river in the Southwest's changing landscape seems so daunting.

The Colorado is suffering from a historic drought that has exposed the region's dependence on a single, vulnerable resource. Nearly 40 million people in seven states depend on the river, a population some forecasts say could nearly double in the next 50 years.

The drought, now in its 16th year, has made one fact brutally clear: The Colorado cannot continue to meet the current urban, agricultural, hydroelectric and recreational demands on it — and the point at which the river will fall short could come sooner than anyone thought.

That is true even after an unusually wet spring in the Rocky Mountains, where runoff feeds the Colorado and its tributaries.

In the decades to come, federal officials say, significant shortages are likely to force water-supply cutbacks in parts of the basin, the first in the more than 90 years that the river has been managed under the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

They would not apply evenly. In Arizona, which would take the steepest cuts, officials are warning that the elaborate conservation measures and infrastructure put in place in the 1980s to guard against shortages will probably not be sufficient. As the drought continues, serious shortages and more severe cutbacks have become more likely.

Farmers who grow cattle feed and cotton in central Arizona could be forced to let fields lie fallow, maybe for good, and cities like Phoenix might have to begin reusing wastewater and even capping urban growth, the region's economic engine.

Here in Yuma, though, there may be no cuts at all. Thanks to the seemingly endless idiosyncrasies of the rules governing the Colorado, much of metropolitan Phoenix could theoretically become a ghost town while Yuma keeps planting lettuce in the desert.

The looming shortages have opened a contentious new conversation here in Arizona, with increasing calls for rethinking the way the state divides the water it also shares with six other states, including California. Some experts say that a recalibration is in order — that while it may not make sense for millions of people to live in the arid West, people should take precedence over growing leafy greens on an industrial scale.

In a 2013 study, the Bureau of Reclamation suggested transferring about a million acre-feet of water from farms. Academics say it is only a matter of time before agriculture is forced to yield some of its supply — and that farmers could benefit financially from such transfers.

That kind of talk is rattling farmers in Yuma. They know they have water priority but not necessarily political priority.

"They believe there's a target on their backs," said Tom Buschatzke, who leads the Arizona Department of Water Resources. "I believe they're right." [more]

Shrinking Colorado River is a growing concern for Yuma farmers — and millions of water users

Technorati Tags: California,North America,Colorado River,drought,freshwater depletion,agriculture,global warming,climate change

U.S. Drought Monitor

NOTE: To view regional drought conditions, click on map above. State maps can be accessed from regional maps.

The data cutoff for Drought Monitor maps is each Tuesday at 8 a.m. EDT. The maps, which are based on analysis of the data, are released each Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

Download PDF View last week's map Statistics Comparison Statistics Table Change Maps

The U.S. Drought Monitor is produced through a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

For local details and impacts, please contact your State Climatologist or Regional Climate Center.

Climate change

By Adam Wernick
7 August 2015

(PRI) – Scientists estimate that due to climate change, the village of Kivalina, in northwestern Alaska, will be underwater by the year 2025.

In 2008, the Inupiat village sued 24 of the world's biggest fossil fuel companies for damages. In 2013, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case and the village has declared it will not file a new claim in state court.

Meanwhile, nature, heedless of humankind’s eternal squabbles, goes about its business: the sea around Kivalina continues to rise, the storms get stronger, the ice gets thinner — and Kivalina's 400 residents must grapple with how to relocate in the decade they're estimated to have left.

Kivalina is on a very thin barrier reef island between the Chukchi Sea and the Kivalina Lagoon, in the northwest of Alaska, above the Arctic Circle. It takes three plane flights to get there: one to Anchorage; another to a town called Kotzebue; and a third, aboard a tiny cargo plane, to Kivalina.

Kivalina City Council member Colleen Swan says the people of the village rely for food mostly on what the environment, especially the ocean, provides for them. “It’s been our way to make a living for hundreds of years,” she says. “During the winter months the ice is part of our landscape, because we go out there and we set up camps and hunt, and it's all seasonal. We were able to see the changes years ago.” […]

Swan says she is exhausted by the stress of watching her community wash away and wondering whether they will need to evacuate. “We just had a minor storm last fall and I'm one of the first responders if anything goes wrong, so I keep an eye on things,” she says. “When we got that storm last fall, I decided I'm just going to go to sleep. I'm tired of worrying, I want to get some rest.”

“The next morning when I woke up, I saw the impacts from a minor storm and how quickly the water rose, and I realized that was a very dangerous thing for me to do, to sleep, to not face the reality of that night,” she continues.

“I realized this is what climate deniers do — not us. Not us, who face the reality every day. We wake up to it. There was never a debate for the people of Kivalina. We just wake up to it every morning.” [more]

Will the residents of Kivalina, Alaska be the first climate change refugees in the US?

Technorati Tags: Arctic,Alaska,global warming,climate change,sea ice,flood,sea level,North America,coastal erosion,climate refugees

California drought

By Stacey Vanek Smith
6 August 2015

(NPR) – Some California farmers are turning to more profitable crops — like pistachios and almonds — in order to fund the drilling of deeper wells to cope with the long drought. Those crops, however, are some of the thirstiest around.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

We've all heard reports about how California is running out of water, but there is water in California, tons of it deep underground in the Central Valley aquifer, the big underground pool that everyone shares. And there's a race on to get what's left. Stacey Vanek Smith from our PLANET MONEY podcast has the story.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Mark Watte is a farmer in Tulare, Calif. We're driving across his 3,000 acres of beautiful cotton and black-eyed peas and corn. Watte is a very organized guy.

So is that a to-do list on your steering wheel?

MARK WATTE: It is.

SMITH: There is a lot to do these days. Watte relies on the Central Valley aquifer to water his crops. And the water level in the aquifer is dropping 10 feet a week in some places.

WATTE: This is a pump that's - it should be producing water. It's not. Let's see if there's any water in it. This is a good sound. You'll like this.

SMITH: Watte picks up a rock and tosses it down the pipe.

WATTE: Water.

SMITH: Oh, was that - was there water?

WATTE: That was water, yeah. So there's water down there, but the pump that was here wouldn't reach that water anymore. We have to deepen it.

SMITH: Watte is putting in eight new wells - total cost - almost $2 million. He is locked in an expensive race in the Central Valley to see who can afford to drill deep enough to get to the precious water in the aquifer. A lot of people have already lost this race, like Karen Hendrickson.

KAREN HENDRICKSON: Our well is dry, so we come here for support on drinking water.

SMITH: How long ago did your well go dry?

HENDRICKSON: It's been a year already.

SMITH: Woah.

HENDRICKSON: Yeah. It's been a year.

SMITH: Hendrickson lives in Porterville, Calif., 30 minutes west of Mark Watte's farms. People on the east side of town have no water. They rely on relief stations like this one in the parking lot of a church. It has portable showers and sinks and hands out bottles of drinking water. […]

SMITH: Hendrickson's house used to get its water from a well, a well that reached into the aquifer. But the water level dropped below her well, and she can't afford to dig deeper. Who can afford to dig deeper - people, like Mark Watte, who grow these. […]

SMITH: Ten times more profitable than other crops. Watte makes $10,000 an acre for pistachios. Most other crops bring in a thousand dollars an acre. And here is where you see the screwed up economics of drought. Pistachios, almonds, and walnuts need a ton of water. They are some of the thirstiest crops around. Growing nut trees in a drought is harder, and that has helped push the price of nuts way up. So now farmers all over California's Central Valley are doing exactly what Mark Watte is doing - ripping out their other crops and planting nut trees. James Famiglietti is a water scientist for NASA.

JAMES FAMIGLIETTI: It's a real nut rush.

SMITH: A nut rush.

FAMIGLIETTI: And it's a real nut boom.

SMITH: So basically, as water runs out, farmers are planting crops that need more water.

FAMIGLIETTI: That's right.

SMITH: Hedge funds and big banks have started buying California farmland and planting almond and pistachio trees. A lot of them reach out to Famiglietti to ask him, is this a good time to get into the nut-growing business?

FAMIGLIETTI: I generally don't respond. I don't want to encourage someone to go make a short-term investment that would use up a lot of water. […]

SMITH: If Watte were to cut back his water use, he would just lose out. His neighbors would suck up that water. Hedge funds would suck up that water. The result of this is that everyone is using more water, planting more nut trees, drilling deeper wells. Wells in the area used to be around 200 feet deep. Now many go down 2000 feet.

James Famiglietti, the water scientist, says at this pace, the aquifer will last another 60 years, a hundred years at the most. In the meantime, the water level keeps dropping, wells keep drying up. [more]

The Twisty Logic Of The Drought: Grow Thirsty Crops To Dig Deeper Wells

Technorati Tags: California,North America,drought,freshwater depletion,agriculture

It’s too late

By Eric Holthaus
5 August 2015

(Rolling Stone) – Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state's Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.

On July 20th, James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist who brought climate change to the public's attention in the summer of 1988, issued a bombshell: He and a team of climate scientists had identified a newly important feedback mechanism off the coast of Antarctica that suggests mean sea levels could rise 10 times faster than previously predicted: 10 feet by 2065. The authors included this chilling warning: If emissions aren't cut, "We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization."

Eric Rignot, a climate scientist at NASA and the University of California-Irvine and a co-author on Hansen's study, said their new research doesn't necessarily change the worst-case scenario on sea-level rise, it just makes it much more pressing to think about and discuss, especially among world leaders. In particular, says Rignot, the new research shows a two-degree Celsius rise in global temperature — the previously agreed upon "safe" level of climate change — "would be a catastrophe for sea-level rise." […]

And yet, these aren't even the most disturbing changes happening to the Earth's biosphere that climate scientists are discovering this year. For that, you have to look not at the rising sea levels but to what is actually happening within the oceans themselves.

Water temperatures this year in the North Pacific have never been this high for this long over such a large area — and it is already having a profound effect on marine life.

Eighty-year-old Roger Thomas runs whale-watching trips out of San Francisco. On an excursion earlier this year, Thomas spotted 25 humpbacks and three blue whales. During a survey on July 4th, federal officials spotted 115 whales in a single hour near the Farallon Islands — enough to issue a boating warning. Humpbacks are occasionally seen offshore in California, but rarely so close to the coast or in such numbers. Why are they coming so close to shore? Exceptionally warm water has concentrated the krill and anchovies they feed on into a narrow band of relatively cool coastal water. The whales are having a heyday. "It's unbelievable," Thomas told a local paper. "Whales are all over the place."

Last fall, in northern Alaska, in the same part of the Arctic where Shell is planning to drill for oil, federal scientists discovered 35,000 walruses congregating on a single beach. It was the largest-ever documented "haul out" of walruses, and a sign that sea ice, their favored habitat, is becoming harder and harder to find.

Marine life is moving north, adapting in real time to the warming ocean. Great white sharks have been sighted breeding near Monterey Bay, California, the farthest north that's ever been known to occur. A blue marlin was caught last summer near Catalina Island — 1,000 miles north of its typical range. Across California, there have been sightings of non-native animals moving north, such as Mexican red crabs.

No species may be as uniquely endangered as the one most associated with the Pacific Northwest, the salmon. Every two weeks, Bill Peterson, an oceanographer and senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Oregon, takes to the sea to collect data he uses to forecast the return of salmon. What he's been seeing this year is deeply troubling.

Salmon are crucial to their coastal ecosystem like perhaps few other species on the planet. A significant portion of the nitrogen in West Coast forests has been traced back to salmon, which can travel hundreds of miles upstream to lay their eggs. The largest trees on Earth simply wouldn't exist without salmon. […]

"You talk to fishermen, and they all say: 'We've never seen anything like this before,' " says Peterson. "So when you have no experience with something like this, it gets like, 'What the hell's going on?' " [more]

The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,fish decline,ecosystem disruption,mammal decline,marine mammal,Arctic,California,North America,sea level,ocean acidification,extinction,mass extinction,Alaska,pollution,agriculture,dead zone,eutrophication,ocean anoxia,flood,shellfish decline

Climate change is bringing.

By Fernanda Santos
1 August 2015

WALLA WALLA, Washington (The New York Times) – Another summer of record-breaking drought and heat has seized the West, setting off costly and destructive wildfires from Southern California, where a single blaze burned more than 30,000 acres of national forest east of Los Angeles, to Montana, where a fast-moving fire in Glacier National Park recently forced tourists to flee hotels, campgrounds and vehicles.

No measurable rain has fallen here in Walla Walla since May. Temperatures have broken decades-old records. And, though known for soaking skies and cool summers, Washington State is well on track to surpass last year’s wildfire season, its busiest on record.

Dozens of homes and thousands of acres have burned over the past few months — in the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula, in suburban communities on the edge of the wild lands, and in this city of wheat farms and vineyards where hundreds of firefighters are still battling a blaze on the western slopes of the Blue Mountains, digging and scraping the earth, building barriers of dirt to shield the dried-out forests from the approaching flames.

“Our fire season started a month ahead, our crops matured weeks ahead and the dry weather we usually get in August, we’ve had since May,” said Peter J. Goldmark, Washington’s commissioner of public lands. Walking along the edge of the Blue Creek fire, burning near the Oregon-Washington border, he added, “By heavens, if this isn’t a sign of climate change, then what is climate change going to bring?”

The entire region is under duress. It has been so dry for so long that federal officials have warned about the potential for more catastrophe in the months ahead, as drought and climate change push high temperatures higher, drying already-arid lands.

The conditions vary from one area to the next: an unforgiving drought in California, where a fire captain died Thursday night while battling one of 23 wildfires burning in the northern part of the state; snow that arrived late and melted early in Idaho; extreme temperature swings in the Southwest; and grass that has turned to tinder across the Pacific Northwest.

But the West’s stubborn drought seems to be especially devastating the farther north it reaches. In Alaska, 399 fires burned in June. That was nearly double the number seen in the same month in 2004 — considered to have been the state’s worst fire year on record.

In the past, the fires mostly burned tundra. This year, though, several have merged and marched toward cities and small fishing villages, destroying, damaging or threatening hundreds of homes.

It is all part of an extensive nationwide scorching. About 63,312 wildfires destroyed 3.6 billion acres of land across the country last year, at a cost of $1.52 billion to fight the fires.

Early projections have placed this year’s cost even higher, at up to $2.1 billion, well beyond the $1.5 billion set aside by the federal Interior and Agriculture Departments, which administer more than 600 million acres of public lands. […]

Between 2005 and 2014, the average number of fires that burned more than 100,000 acres — known as “megafires” — increased to 9.8 per year, up from fewer than one a year before 1995, according to statistics compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center, a multiagency logistical hub in Boise, Idaho.

One reason, ecologists and historians say, is the well-established link between big fires and the steady loss of moisture in forests from higher temperatures brought on by climate change. […]

Canada, with an unprecedented 5,548 fires and 9.1 million acres burned as of July 23, registered record temperatures in May and June, Earth’s warmest such month on record, according to NASA and several other climate reporting organizations. [more]

Dry Days Bring a Ferocious Start to the Fire Season

Technorati Tags: California,North America,Canada,wildfire,forest fire,drought,heat wave,global warming,climate change,crop failure,agriculture,phenology,Alaska,Arctic

Bigger & Bigger

By Jessica Marmor Shaw
2 August 2015

(MarketWatch) – A wildfire that has been raging in northern California since last Wednesday jumped 20,000 acres overnight, and has now charred 47,000 acres and is threatening 6,300 homes.

Fire officials say the massive blaze, called the Rocky Fire, in the Lower Lake area north of San Francisco is only 5% contained. Already it has destroyed 24 homes and 26 outbuildings.

Cal Fire says an evacuation advisory has been issued affecting 12,000 people and several roads have been closed.

The fire is the biggest of the many burning in the forests and woodlands of Northern California. [more]

Massive California fire jumped 20,000 acres overnight

Technorati Tags: California,North America,wildfire,forest fire,drought,heat wave,global warming,climate change

Cooking Life

By Doyle Rice
1 August 2015

(USA Today) – Freakishly hot, dry weather in the Pacific Northwest is killing millions of fish in the overheated waters of the region's rivers and streams.

"We've lost about 1.5 million juvenile fish this year due to drought conditions at our hatcheries," Ron Warren of Washington State's Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. "This is unlike anything we've seen for some time."

Sockeye salmon losses in the Columbia River due to the heat are in the hundreds of thousands, said Jeff Fryer, senior fishery scientist with the river's Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The fish were returning from the ocean to spawn when the "unprecedented" warm water killed them, he said.

Water temperatures in the Columbia River — part of which runs along the border of Oregon and Washington — reached the low 70s shortly after July 4, something that doesn't usually happen until August, if at all, Fryer said.

High temperatures — coupled with the low water levels — can be lethal to fish, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. With no end to the drought in sight, there could be additional fish die-offs, said Rod French, a fish biologist with the department.

Dead and distressed sockeye salmon found earlier this month in the Deschutes River in Oregon likely came from the Columbia River and were bound for other locations before they swam into the Deschutes in search of cooler water, the department said. Early pathology results suggest they died from columnaris, a bacterial infection typically associated with high water temperatures and/or low levels of dissolved oxygen.

In Idaho, "it's a tough year for all (migrating) fish, including sockeye," Mike Peterson, Idaho Fish and Game's senior sockeye research biologist, said in a statement.

Recreational fishermen in the region are also feeling the heat: Warm stream temperatures due to low flows and hot weather cause fish trauma, disease, and deaths, which has prompted the closing of streams to all fishing along the Washington Cascades, Richard Heim of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in this week's U.S. Drought Monitor report.

"When streams get too warm, fish are stressed and as a result the fishing goes downhill fast," Rick Hargrave, information and education division administrator at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in a statement. "Fish stop biting or retreat to deeper, cooler water where they are harder to catch."

July will likely be one of Seattle's hottest single months on record, the National Weather Service reported.

On Friday, the city hit 90 degrees for the 11th time this summer. That's an all-time record for normally mild Seattle.

The current heat wave is expected to last into early next week. Meanwhile, 100% of Washington and Oregon are now in a drought at the same time, something that hasn't happened since 2001. [more]

Heat, drought cook fish alive in Pacific Northwest

Technorati Tags: North America,fish decline,heat wave,drought,global warming,climate change,anoxia

Wildfires

By Adam Voiland
28 July 2015

(NASA) – A new analysis of 35 years of meteorological data confirms fire seasons have become longer. Fire season, which varies in timing and duration based on location, is defined as the time of year when wildfires are most likely to ignite, spread, and affect resources.

In the map above, areas where the fire season lengthened between 1979 and 2014 are shown with shades of orange and red. Areas where the length of the fire season stayed the same are yellow. Shades of blue show where the fire season grew shorter. Gray indicates that there was not enough vegetation to sustain wildfires.

The analysis, led by U.S. Forest Service ecologist Matt Jolly, focused on four meteorological variables that affect the length of fire season: maximum temperatures, minimum relative humidity, the number of rain-free days, and maximum wind speeds. A combination of high temperatures, low humidity, rainless days, and high winds make wildfires more likely to spread and lengthens fire seasons. Jolly and colleagues used data from NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Prediction Reanalysis, NOAA’s NCEP-DOE Reanalysis, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Reanalysis.

The researchers found that fire weather seasons have lengthened across one quarter of Earth’s vegetated surface. In certain areas, extending the fire season by a bit each year added up to a large change over the full study period. For instance, parts of the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, and East Africa now face wildfire seasons that are more than a month longer than they were 35 years ago.

The authors attribute the longer season in the western United States to changes in the timing of snowmelt, vapor pressure, and the timing of spring rains—all of which have been linked to global warming and climate change. On the other hand, the easing of droughts in Western Africa and the Pacific coast of South America likely contributed to the shortening of fire seasons in those areas.

In some parts of the world, tough fire seasons have also become more frequent. “The map at the top of the page depicts steady trends in season length, while the map below shows changes in variability,” explained Jolly. “In other words, the map below shows where long seasons are becoming more frequent, even if they aren’t becoming steadily longer.”

While many of the same areas that saw fire seasons grow progressively longer also faced more frequent fires seasons, the two measures differed significantly in some areas. Australia, for instance, has not experienced an increase in the length of fire seasons. However, eastern Australia has seen the years with long and severe fire seasons become more frequent.

Overall, 54 percent of the world’s vegetated surfaces experienced long fire weather seasons more frequently between 1996 and 2013 as compared with 1979-1996, according to Jolly. This amounted to a doubling in the total global burnable area affected by long fire weather seasons. (For this calculation, “long fire season” was defined as a length that was one standard deviation above the historical mean.)

It is important to note that although the study shows many environments have become more prone to fires, it does not demonstrate that the wildfires burned more intensely or charred more acres. That’s because even with longer and more frequent fire seasons, other factors can affect whether fires occur and how they behave, such as: whether lightning or human activity ignites the fires; whether humans attempt to suppress them; and whether there is enough fuel to sustain them.

References

• Jolly, M. et al, (2015, July 14) Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013. Nature Communications, (6) 7537.

Further Reading

1. Scientific American (2015, July 14) More Wildfires Burning More Forest May Become the New Normal. Accessed July 21, 2015.
2. The Washington Post (2015, July 15) Scientists say the planet’s weather is becoming more conducive to wildfires . Accessed July 21, 2015.
3. Missoulan (2015, July 20) Missoula study: Climate change increasing length of wildfire seasons worldwide. Accessed July 21, 2015.

Longer, More Frequent Fire Seasons

Technorati Tags: NASA,global warming,climate change,Australia,wildfire,forest fire,Brazil,South America,Africa,NOAA,Mexico