A warming climate has made it more challenging to deal with wildfires by extending the number of days they can occur and leading to faster-growing larger fires that can have major impacts on air quality.
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WATCH HERETop priority for fire crews is the protection of life and property. As many communities have grown in the wildland urban interface in the last few decades, this has led to increased fire suppression.
NBC Bay Area spoke with a lead author of a report done in collaboration with San Jose State University's Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center and PG&E, which said the reduction of fires that once burned uninterrupted in the state has led to wildfire behavior consequences we are seeing more of now.
"We implemented a policy of fire exclusion," climate analyst and study co-author Dr. Patrick Brown said. "So that worked, and so we have a century of buildup of fuels that is just sitting on the landscape. Then we have warming coming in on top of that, which means that when we do have fires, they can be much more catastrophic because there’s so much more fuel to burn. They produce much more smoke. And they are harder to contain, more likely to break into adjacent communities."
The goal according to the study is to manage more low intensity fires, which would require a boost to prescribed burning. Otherwise, the state will likely continue to see more high intensity fires, which can have the compounding effect of also overwhelming ecosystems that have been resilient to wildfire in the past.
If prescribed burns were boosted by 600,000 additional acres per year above the state’s current goal (1 million acres treatment/prescribed burns) the results could have a big impact on future wildfire intensity.
“What we show is if you were to do that on a large scale – 1.6 million acres per year in California, which is kind of similar to what the state’s articulated goal of 1 million acres per year – then you can actually have a future of reduced wildfire intensity even as it gets warmer," Brown said. "So this is not a situation where we’re looking at increased wildfire intensity regardless and then fuel reduction can mitigate that increase. We’re actually talking about a future where you could potentially have reduced wildfire intensity overall if you were to scale up this fuel reduction to large levels."
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As the report shows, at the current pace, future wildfires may continue the path of higher intensity – perhaps as much as 25% more intense. However, an expanded and maintained prescribed burn plan can also reduce potential intensity by up to 31% even in a warming climate. It's that possibility many fire weather scientists hope the state will consider adopting moving forward.
