Introduction to personal relationship with climate change

You feel it first in the eyes, an unusually dry and stinging feeling in your irises. Then the smell hits, a barbeque-like aroma of smoke and smog. When the skylines disappear and the sky tinges orange, it’s wildfire season.

Personal relationship with wildfires

(Flickr – Creative Commons)

Growing up in California, a state where it never snows, instead of snow days, we got air quality closures from nearby wildfires. Just this month, over 13 school districts across Southern California braced for week-long closures due to three active wildfires. The most recent Climate Vulnerability Assessment of California Rangelands found that wildfire season is starting sooner, ending later, and causing more acreage of damage in California. This phenomenon has been attributed to climate change by a National Integrated Drought Information System-sponsored study in the journal Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, which found that nearly all of the observed increase in summer burned areas in California over the past 50 years was due to human-caused climate change.

Active wildfires in CA

• Park Fire (429,603 acres)
• Bridge Fire (54,878 acres)
• Line Fire (39,232 acres)
• Airport Fire (23,526 acres)
• Coffee Pot Fire (14,104 acres)

Feedback loop

(Flickr – Creative Commons)

While in the past, wildfires have been considered a part of the natural cycle of the Californian ecosystem, the climate-change induced frequency of the wildfires have threatened California greenhouse-gas emission reduction goals. Wildfires emit both carbon dioxide and methane and accounted for the second-largest source of greenhouse gasses in California in 2020. This causes a feedback loop where climate change increases the frequency and scale of wildfires, and wildfires further contribute to worsening climate change.

Quote on feedback loop

In 2020, Professor Michael Jerrett at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health stated that power plant emission reductions from over two decades were “at risk of being swept aside by the smoke produced in a single year of record-breaking wildfires.”

Stats on wildfire increase due to climate change

• In 2024, year-to-date, there have been 111 wildfires where 300 or more acres were burned, a 716% increase compared to the average of the past 5 years.
• From 1996 to 2021, human-caused climate change contributed to a 320% increase in annual burned areas.
• 14 out of 20 of California’s largest wildfires to date occurred after 2015.
• In Northern California, a hotter climate is expected to increase wildfire risk from 40-90% by the end of the century.

Bibliography:

• https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents
• https://www.epa.gov/arc-x/california-prepares-increased-wildfire-risk-air-quality-climate-change
• https://calmatters.org/california-wildfire-map-tracker/ 
• https://www.drought.gov/news/study-finds-climate-change-blame-record-breaking-california-wildfires-2023-08-08 
• https://34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/calfire-website/our-impact/fire-statistics/top-20-destructive-ca-wildfires.pdf?rev=9e4974c273274858880c2dd28292a96f&hash=29E21CBFCE8D9885F606246607D21CEB
• https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/california_rangelandsva.pdf 

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Written by: Momo Sarada

Edited by: Ade Surya