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The science behind the West Coast fires

A collection of research and insights from Stanford experts on wildfires' links to climate change, the health impacts of smoke, and promising strategies for preventing huge blazes and mitigating risks.

Wildfires  torched more than five million acres in California, Oregon and Washington in 2020. They killed dozens of people, prompted evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands more and spewed enough toxin-laden smoke to make air conditions hazardous for millions. 

In 2021, wildfires in California alone burned more than 1.7 million acres before the end of August, destroying thousands of structures and forcing mass evacuations.

Tendrils of smoke from fires in the western United States have drifted as far as Europe. As environmental economist Marshall Burke put it in a virtual panel discussion hosted in September 2020 by Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment , “This is not just a U.S. West Coast issue, this is a nationwide issue.”

As the fires burn, they are unlocking huge amounts of carbon dioxide from soils and plants and launching it into the atmosphere. 

Six of the seven largest fires on the modern record in California ignited in 2020 or 2021, and most of the largest fires in the state’s history have occurred in the past two decades. Scientists say global warming and decades of fire suppression have helped lay the groundwork for the devastating blazes. One study by Stanford researchers estimated as much as 20 million acres in California would benefit from vegetation thinning or prescribed burns.  Another  found that the risk of extreme wildfire conditions during autumn has more than doubled across California over the past four decades, and human-caused global warming has made the changes more likely.

This collection covers how scientists are unraveling the factors that contribute to wildfire risk, understanding their impacts and developing solutions. Scroll down for wildfire research news and insights related to climate change , health impacts , prevention and mitigation , prediction and modeling and more.

Last updated: August 31, 2021

Climate change

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Longer, more extreme fire seasons

A study led by Stanford scientists shows autumn days with extreme fire weather have more than doubled in California since the early 1980s due to climate change.

What to expect from future wildfire seasons

The new normal for Western wildfires is abnormal, with increasingly bigger and more destructive blazes.

Wildfire weather

Stanford climate and wildfire experts discuss extreme weather’s role in current and future wildfires, as well as ways to combat the trend toward bigger, more intense conflagrations.

Climate change has its ‘thumb on the scale’ of extreme fire

“Humans are ingenious at managing climate risk, but our systems are built around the historical climate,” climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh told  The Washington Post .  “Systems that were built for the old climate are being stressed in a new way.”

(Image credit: Sheila Sund / Flickr )

Shifting biomes

“In a changing climate it’s not just about continuing to manage the risk of ignition. We also need to recognize that we are dealing with biome shifts that will occur through time," said Chris Field, director of Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment . Read more in the National Geographic article, " How much are beetles to blame for the 2020 fires? "

Wildfire emissions

“The forests are alive. They’re growing and dying and regrowing,” says Michael Wara, director of the climate and energy policy program at the Woods Institute for the Environment. “That’s really different than carbon that was buried 50 million years ago under the earth that we are unearthing and burning. I think it’s not helpful to compare the two. It’s a misdirection.”

Wildfire smoke worse for kids' health than smoke from controlled burns

Immune markers and pollutant levels in the blood indicate wildfire smoke may be more harmful to children’s health than smoke from a controlled burn.

California wildfires bring questions about health and climate

What does smoke inhalation do to my health? What’s the evidence that these are caused by climate change? Here is how some Stanford experts answer and continue to tackle these complex concerns.

Wildfires' health impacts

California’s massive wildfires bring a host of health concerns for vulnerable populations, firefighters and others. Kari Nadeau and Mary Prunicki of Stanford’s Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research discuss related threats, preparedness and ongoing research.

Mask confusion

"Only certain masks are effective during wildfires, while a range of face coverings may help prevent coronavirus transmission," Stanford researchers write in Environmental Research Letters . Drawing on human behavior studies and past responses to epidemics and wildfire smoke, the scientists recommend ways to communicate mask-use guidance more effectively.

An unexpectedly huge toll on America's lungs

As wildfires become more frequent due to climate change, the increasing amounts of smoke may harm Americans nearly as much as rising temperatures, according to a working paper by Stanford environmental economist Marshall Burke and colleagues. “We hadn’t even thought of that as a key part of the climate impact in this country,”  Burke told Bloomberg .

Wildfire smoke is poisoning California's kids. Some pay a higher price.

Marshall Burke, an economist at Stanford, has found that, across California, as the number of smoke days has risen over the past 15 years, it has begun to reverse some of the gains that the state had made in cleaning up its air from conventional sources of pollution.

The shifting burden of wildfires in the United States

Wildfire smoke will be one of the most widely felt health impacts of climate change throughout the country, but U.S. clean air regulations are not equipped to deal with it. Stanford experts discuss the causes and impacts of wildfire activity and its rapid acceleration in the American West.

Tips to protect against wildfire smoke

Warnings of another severe wildfire season abound, as do efforts to reduce the risk of ignition. Yet few are taking precautions against the smoke. Stanford experts advise on contending with hazardous air quality.

Wildfire smoke can increase hazardous toxic metals in air, study finds

Smoke from wildfires – particularly those that burn manmade structures – can significantly increase the amount of hazardous toxic metals present in the air, sending up plumes that can travel for miles, a new study from the California Air Resources Board has suggested. "No one is protected," said Mary Prunicki of Stanford’s Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research.

How do people respond to wildfire smoke?

Interviews with Northern California residents reveal that social norms and social support are essential for understanding protective health behaviors during wildfire smoke events – information that could be leveraged to improve public health outcomes.

Wildfire smoke exposure during pregnancy increases preterm birth risk

Smoke from wildfires may have contributed to thousands of additional premature births in California between 2007 and 2012. The findings underscore the value of reducing the risk of big, extreme wildfires and suggest pregnant people should avoid very smoky air.

Prevention and mitigation

Setting fires to avoid fires.

Analysis by Stanford researchers suggests California needs fuel treatments – whether prescribed burns or vegetation thinning – on about 20 million acres or nearly 20 percent of the state’s land area.

A new treatment to prevent wildfires

Scientists and engineers worked with state and local agencies to develop and test a long-lasting, environmentally benign fire-retarding material. If used on high-risk areas, the treatment could dramatically cut the number of fires that occur each year.

Wildfire preparedness

Experts with Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment discuss strategies for managing wildfire risks, including incentive structures, regulations, partnerships and financing.

Mitigating risks with law and environmental policy

"In talking about risks and policy prescriptions, we need to separate out wildfires at the wildland-urban interface – those that put people and communities at most risk – from fires that historically have burned through our remote forestlands," said Deborah Sivas , Director of Stanford’s Environmental Law Clinic. 

Concrete steps California can take to prevent massive fire devastation

"Successful wildfire preparedness begins with a clear strategy and accountability for outcomes," writes Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment.

Are forest managers robbing the future to pay for present-day fires?

"As fires burn with greater magnitude and frequency, the cost of fighting them is increasingly borne by money earmarked for prevention," writes  Bill Lane Center for the American West writer in residence Felicity Barringer.

Policy brief

Managing the growing cost of wildfire.

Stanford experts review recent trends in wildfire activity, quantify how the smoke from these wildfires is affecting air quality and health across the U.S. and discuss what policymakers can do to help reduce wildfire risk.

California burning

Heat waves that could melt the fat in uncooked meat until it would “run away in spontaneous gravy.” Forests that turned abruptly into “great sheets of flame.” These are some of the realities of life in California noted by the botanist William Brewer in 1860, and surfaced in an essay for  The New Yorker by Stanford Classics professor Ian Morris about being evacuated from his home in the Santa Cruz mountains.

According to Morris, "Before Europeans came, Native Californians had found ways to cope with this reality. Many moved seasonally, partly to avoid forest fires. As much as one-sixth of the state was deliberately burned each year." Not many people lived in places like the Santa Cruz Mountains until the 1870s. Since then, Morris wrote, the "quiet migration of hundreds of thousands of nature lovers has created one of the most unnatural landscapes on Earth."

Preparing together

"We need programs that emphasize and support herd immunity from fires," Rebecca Miller, a PhD student in the Emmet Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, told  Mic . Rebuilding efforts after a fire, she added, ought to recognize that once-burned neighborhoods are likely to burn again.

Fire burned the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa, Calif. in October 2017. (Image credit: Sgt. 1st Class Benjamin Cosse / California National Guard)

Prediction and modeling

Mapping dry wildfire fuels with ai and new satellite data.

Stanford researchers have developed a deep-learning model that maps fuel moisture levels in fine detail across 12 western states, opening a door for better fire predictions.

Predicting wildfires with CAT scans

Engineers at Stanford have used X-ray CT scans, more common in hospital labs, to study how wood catches fire. They’ve now turned that knowledge into a computer simulation to predict where fires will strike and spread.

Satellite imagery shows hot spots and thick smoke plumes from wildfires burning in Oregon and northern California on Sept. 8, 2020. (Video credit: NOAA)

Stanford Wildfire Research

Find experts, events, information about ongoing research projects and more.

Stanford Wildfire News

Read the latest wildfire coverage from Stanford News.

Media Contacts

Josie Garthwaite School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (650) 497-0947;  [email protected]

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The Past, Present, and Future of California Wildfires

Essay By Professor Jeffrey Kane

The 2018 wildfire season in California was the deadliest and most destructive on record, burning almost 1.9 million acres—an area 2.5 times the size of Rhode Island and more area than had ever burned in California within the past 50 years. Most scientists, managers, and firefighters would tell you that last year's fire season was not a surprise.

If a fire season like this didn't occur last year, it would have been this year or next year or the year after that. In fact, 15 of the 20 largest fires in California state history have occurred since 2000. The tragic fires of 2018 are part of a broader pattern occurring across the West that shows no sign of abating in the near future unless we make substantial changes. We can surely agree that more needs to be done to limit the impacts of these events.

The 2018 fire season is the culmination of three main factors: climate change, past fire and forest management practices, and development in the wildland urban interface.

The marked increase in greenhouse gases over the past century has increased the average temperature in California by 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit. This seemingly modest difference has profound impacts on our state. Warmer temperatures are extending the fire season, meaning that fires are burning earlier in the spring and later into the fall. The fire season in the Sierra Nevada, for example, has doubled in length and is now more than 10 weeks longer than it was three decades ago. Under warmer conditions, the atmosphere also draws more water from the ground. This increase in evaporative demand more readily dries out fuels that can easily ignite.

Exacerbating the effects of climate change on fire is the legacy of past fire and forest management. For thousands of years prior to Euro-American settlement, Native American tribes and lightning fires burned 5 million acres in California every year, with many areas burning every 10 years or so. These fires were typically more benign, burning more often but at lower intensities. The federal government's focus on fire suppression has resulted in denser forests with more continuous fuel to burn in an intense fire. These conditions are quite common around and within most communities.

15 of the 20 largest fires in California state history have occurred since 2000

Finally, the population of California has grown rapidly over the past 75 years, increasing the risk of devastating wildfires. More homes are being built within or near wildlands and constructed with materials that can often burn easily.

Forestry major Tenaya Wood, president of HSU's Student Association for Fire Ecology club, works a fire line. Wood and other students from the club joined representatives from various organizations for the Prescribed Fire Training Exchange on Yurok land in the Klamath Mountains last year. The program teaches participants how to use controlled burns to manage land.

These are daunting and often human-driven factors that we can reverse with effective policies and sufficient resources.

One thing that seems particularly evident is that fire can be a great unifier. An example of this is the growing support for expanding the use of prescribed fire, or controlled burning, which was once a common way of managing California ecosystems. In fact, one might say there has been a prescribed fire renaissance over the past decade as more people return to this practice to help reduce fuels, restore ecosystems, and protect communities. The Western Klamath Restoration Partnership is also manifesting a positive trajectory by embodying an “all hands, all lands” perspective to encourage private and public partners to solve some of these challenging problems together.

It will be up to future managers, scientists, and homeowners to solve these fire challenges. Thus, it is imperative to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and ability to tackle this problem.

Humboldt State University's Forestry program works toward this goal through education, experience, and exposure to research related to the science and management of fire-prone ecosystems.

Forestry Professor Jeffrey Kane (far right) and his students observe fire behavior in HSU's fire lab.

The program focuses on fire ecology, fire behavior, and fuels management to address current and future problems in California. Students use our indoor fire lab to burn fuels and research fire behavior. This active learning experience reinforces concepts learned in the classroom.

However, learning concepts and science necessary to inform appropriate management responses related to fire is not enough. That's why we're working with local partners, including Native American tribes, to provide students real-life experiences with wildland fire and fuels. For instance, students have participated in the The Nature Conservancy's prescribed fire training exchange program, also known as TREX, in the Klamath Mountains. Last year, 10 HSU students worked with the Cultural Fire Management Council to help bring fire back to Yurok tribal lands and to revitalize this once widespread management practice.

Students are investigating the long-term effectiveness of fuel treatments in the lower elevation shrublands and woodlands of Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, which burned in the 2018 Carr fire. Students are also researching the use of creative thinning techniques and prescribed burning treatments to reduce drought- and bark beetle-caused tree mortality in the central Sierra Nevada.

Events like those of the 2018 wildfire season tug at the heartstrings. Stories of so many lives and homes lost to fire, pictures of the rubble-strewn foundations, and charred forests can invoke the deepest of sympathies and feelings of loss. These images are powerful and harken the destructive potential of fire.

But fires can be restorative and must be part of the solution. The beauty and natural heritage of this state exist, in part, because of fire, which is an essential component of the California landscape. Many ecosystems have seen either too little, too much, or the wrong kind of fire, and the key is to find better ways humans and fire can coexist.

About the author

Jeffrey Kane is a professor of Forestry at Humboldt State, among the top fire science institutions in the country and one of only three universities that have a fire lab. His areas of research include ecology and management of fire-prone ecosystems.

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Stanford experts reflect on the most destructive fire season in California history

The 2018 fire season in California gave Stanford experts much to think about, including how the state can develop better policies for preventing fires and new research to better understand the long-term effects of breathing smoky air.

Scenes like this one following a fire in San Diego County are becoming more commonplace in California. (Image credit: Katrina Swietek / Getty Images)

In November, the Camp Fire in Butte County and the Woolsey Fire near Los Angeles together killed at least 90 people, burned more than 250,000 acres, destroyed more than 20,000 structures and generated unhealthy air conditions in communities hundreds of miles away. The fires also gave Stanford faculty much to consider as they look ahead to a hotter, drier climate and the possibility of even more destructive fire seasons in the future.

We asked experts in health, climate change and public policy to discuss what they learned from this fire season, how the fires influenced their research objectives and ideas they have for fire prevention.

Noah Diffenbaugh

The recent fires highlight the growing risks in California and the American West. Many of the recent fires in California have occurred with record or near-record combustible material that have been elevated by hot conditions. Decades of research show not only that the area burned in the West has been increasing, but also that global warming has been playing a role by increasing the dryness of vegetation on the landscape. The National Climate Assessment that was released by the U.S. government the day after Thanksgiving confirmed this evidence, highlighting that global warming has been responsible for around half of the historical increase in area burned.

With regards to the conditions in California over the past few years, it is clear from multiple lines of evidence that California is now in a new climate, in which conditions are much more likely to be hot, leading to earlier melting of snowpack and exacerbating periods of low precipitation when they occur. The net effect is an extension of the fire season and greater potential for large, intense wildfires.

A key research question going forward is exactly how much the odds of the record-setting conditions that we have just experienced have already been elevated, and how much further they will be elevated in the coming years as global warming continues to unfold.

Mary Prunicki

While we have been investigating the impact of air pollution and wildfires on health, the main focus previously for us and others has been on the health consequences for those relatively close to the fire. The Camp Fire, on the other hand, highlighted the massive impact that wildfires can have on those over 200 miles away. As a result, our center (The Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research) collected biomarkers (for example, blood and saliva) from Bay Area residents during the period of increased smoke exposure from the Camp Fire. We will re-collect biomarkers from the same subjects in one month, when the air quality has been at the typical low levels for several weeks. Our goal will be to look for differences in immune function during the two time periods to help determine the health implications for those exposed to the wildfire smoke in the Bay Area and, potentially, whether wearing a mask during the wildfire smoke altered immune outcomes. These are important questions, as the immune system is not only involved in fighting infections but is key for immunity, autoimmune disease, allergy, asthma, cancer and other diseases.

Rebecca Miller

State legislators responded to the catastrophic 2017 wildfire season with bills that proposed to increase fuel treatments around California through timber thinning and prescribed burns. Gov. Brown issued an executive order in May to establish training and certification programs for prescribed burns and to double the number of actively managed acres in California through thinning, prescribed burns and reforestation. The long-term effects of this executive order and the new wildfire legislation from the 2017–18 session have yet to be seen.

The devastating 2018 wildfires place greater urgency on the need to respond to California’s wildfire problem. Both of these wildfire seasons affected rural and urban areas and also hit Northern and Southern California, increasing interest for action from legislators beyond those from traditionally rural or forested districts. Governor-elect Gavin Newsom has already declared wildfire planning to be a priority of his administration. Looking ahead to the 2019–20 session, wildfires will likely be a major topic of proposed legislation and executive action.

There are dozens of communities in California and in the rest of the western  United States that are at risk of a catastrophic fire in a similar way as Paradise, California, and we need new strategies and technologies to proactively protect them instead of being limited to reactive suppression efforts. While my lab has been focusing on developing a new fire-prevention technology to be leveraged in these high-risk areas, complementary efforts are needed to (1) identify these high-risk areas and (2) fund projects to leverage new technologies for fire prevention.

On the first point, three factors crucial to identifying high-risk areas are: (1) where do fires happen (exact latitude and longitude), (2) how do they happen, and (3) total number of starts per year. The current post-fire reporting that fulfills federal, state, county and city filing requirements most often lacks critical details such as the exact coordinates of where the fire originated (these are often simply placed at the nearest road intersection). Moreover, post-fire investigation is often unable to determine any obvious culprit and the cause of ignition is reported with the exceedingly unhelpful “undetermined” designation. Furthermore, only fires larger than 10 acres are typically reported to the Fire and Resource Assessment Program and are searchable on the state database, but this excludes thousands of fires, many of which could have grown to be catastrophic if conditions on the day were different. Therefore, in order to identify high-risk areas that are burning year after year and draining local, state and federal agencies of their resources, we find ourselves relying on the memories of fire professionals to determine where, how, and how often fires occur.

On the second point, a large Cal Fire (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) grant RFP (request for proposals) is now open for large prevention-oriented projects, but applications are due in mid-December, posing a massive hurdle for the various fire-related agencies in each district – considering that many are still engaged in recovery efforts. Moreover, we have seen that proposals for fire prevention efforts in very high-risk areas in several counties in California have not been funded, despite the fact that these areas routinely have dozens of ignitions per year. One example project is along a highway in Ventura County, where a proposed project to protect the roadside for the 2018 fire season was not funded on this mechanism and the district suffered numerous fire starts and one large 160-acre fire this year that all originated on the side of this road. Worst of all, the large fire occurred while the Woolsey Fire was raging. (It wasn’t started by the Woolsey F­ire). Further, this RFP is one of the first major investments in prevention. Most of the available money is specifically slated to support reactive fire suppression efforts and very few funds are available for proactive fire prevention efforts. It seems what we really need is for legislators to green-light funding of prevention efforts in each district statewide so these agencies have the ability to protect their own high-risk areas right now, without having to cross their fingers and hope they get awarded a grant to protect those areas year after year.

Michael Wara

The Stanford Climate and Energy Policy Program has been working with California legislators since the 2017 wildfires to help them better understand the root causes of destructive wildfires and to take legal and policy steps aimed at reducing risks and creating greater safety for California. This work culminated in framing key issues and the legislative approaches taken by the legislature in the 2017 session.

The Camp and Woolsey fires have reinvigorated this legislative conversation and the Climate and Energy Policy Program is again working with stakeholders to identify potential solutions and perform the necessary analysis to fully develop and vet them. These efforts engage students and faculty from a variety of disciplines across campus including law, business, engineering and the natural sciences.

Rob Jackson

The loss of life and destruction from this year’s California fires is record-breaking and tragic.  The danger continues even hundreds of miles away for people breathing smoky air across the state, including the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Earlier this year, a paper in the Journal of the American Heart Association showed how fires in California in 2015 sent more people to emergency rooms for cardiovascular problems, including heart failure and stroke. More shockingly, recent research at the California National Primate Research Center has shown the effects of being outdoors and breathing sustained, smoky air is particularly damaging for primates younger than three months of age – and lasts for years. Smoky air affects us all, but our young and our old are the most vulnerable by far.

Our work on droughts and fires highlights some of the increased risks observed today. Our work on changing fire regimes, including fire suppression and controlled burns, provides opportunities for reducing some of them.

[Jackson recently wrote about increased fire risk and other climate-related threats in this Scientific American blog post .]

For more faculty who study climate, health and policy related to wildfires, see Stanford’s wildfire experts list .

To read all stories about Stanford science, subscribe to the biweekly  Stanford Science Digest .

California Wildfire Disaster: The Emergency Response Essay

Introduction.

Nations across the world repeatedly encounter emergency situations that push the safety systems to the limits and require immediate and effective action to save human lives with possible retention of vitally important resources. Being of different levels of severity and threat to human lives and safety, both natural disasters and man-induced catastrophes cause significant damage. It is crucial for national security systems and disaster management agencies to have effective contingency and emergency response plans that would minimize harm and losses at a crucial moment. The best way to generate and promote effective disaster response is through analysis and improvement planning.

In this paper, the disaster incident of wildfires in California in 2021 will be reviewed to assess the effectiveness of response and communication strategies to generate possible recommendations for better action in the future. The wildfire seasons occur regularly in the USA and adversely impact numerous states across the country, California being one of the most vulnerable regions. Given the threatening pace of climate change across the globe, with average temperatures rising and droughts increasing, the risks of wildfires enhance worldwide. Therefore, it is imperative to review and assess emergency response to wildfires to address it from the perspectives of Qatar’s emergency response systems.

Aim and Objectives of the Document

The aim of the current document is twofold and is influenced by the need for continuous improvement of communication strategies in times of crises and emergencies to ensure public safety. In particular, the first aim of the paper is to review the instance of the wildfire disaster in 2021 as a threatening emergency. Secondly, the paper is designed to generate particular communication strategies and emergency response recommendations to minimize harm and losses for societies, including Qatar, facing similar hazards under the growing impact of climate change.

To pursue the general aims of the document, several specific objectives are pursued. Namely, it is necessary to assess the quality of governmental and emergency departments’ response to the disaster. In addition, the communication strategies used before, during, and after the emergency need to be analyzed and assessed as per their effectiveness in predicting, preparing, addressing, and recovering after the incident. Moreover, it is particularly important to generate an effective communication strategy to inform vulnerable and difficult-to-reach populations to ensure that the lessons learned from California’s disaster are efficiently applied to future incidents. Lastly, the recommendations for the authorities and agencies should be presented to ensure that the drawbacks are approached for proper correction, and the strengths of the emergency response tactics are reinforced.

Given the complexity of the problem and the difficulty of incorporating efforts to avert the crisis, the scope of the document will be limited to the review of communication strategies and immediate emergency responses. In particular, the government action during and after the wildfire will be analyzed, responsible agencies’ aid and public informing efforts will be evaluated, as well as the recovery actions will be addressed. The paper will not take into consideration the financial aspect of the problem, as well as will not refer to wildfires in other states of the USA at the same period of time. The selection of these particular emergency response elements and this region is validated by the severity of losses and its high probability of representation of similar occasions globally.

Authorities’ Communication Strategies and Outcomes Assessment

The quality, effectiveness, and timeliness of response to an emergency are the key factors that guarantee saved lives and reduced losses in the outcome. Uncontrolled wildfires in California in 2021 had a devastating impact on the forestry and the towns, citizens, and their dwellings and infrastructure. Among the three largest fires, the Dixie fire destroyed 733,475 acres with 43% containment, the “Monument fire has burned 152,125 acres and was 20% contained,” and the Caldor fire burned 122,980 acres with 11% containment” (Yee, 2021, para. 6-7). Such a fast and disruptive force of the disaster necessitated immediate action and informing of the public.

As the wildfires started, numerous responsible agencies started their work immediately to prevent the fires from spreading and ensure people’s safety. In particular, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) appointed their crews to work in the impacted counties and districts (Yee, 2021). Firefighters and emergency responders were sent to the locations caught on fire to stop the burning and provide help to the victims (Yee, 2021). The injured were hospitalized, and the endangered residents were evacuated. As the crisis unfolded, President Biden “approved a major disaster declaration …, opening up federal funding for grants, temporary housing, repairs and other relief efforts as multiple blazes continue to sweep across the Golden State” (Yee, 2021, para. 1). In addition, some non-profit organizations were swiftly involved in accommodating the victims, which was very important in the early stages of the emergency, as well as after it.

Moreover, not only state and county agencies but also federal authorities were included in the work on the elimination of the adverse outcomes of the disaster. According to FEMA (2021), Fire Management Assistance Programs have been initiated to help stop the fires and address the outcomes. In general, the authorities’ response to the California wildfires in 2021 has been informed by prior experiences of similar disasters in the same region. Before the disaster, the public was warned about the rising temperatures and the increasing risks. However, not all of the incidents were predicted since many emergencies occurred as no-notice situations. According to research, “no-notice events are complicated to manage for authorities and residents alike; authorities may struggle to communicate quickly with the population, while residents have limited time between notification and evacuation decisions” (Grajdura, Qian and Niemeier, 2021, p. 1). Therefore, although the public was timely evacuated, thousands of homes were not saved due to the large scale of the disaster and insufficient resources for response.

An evacuation warning is essential for such a fast-spreading disastrous event as no-notice wildfire. Indeed, “the outcome of a wildfire evacuation depends on many complicating factors but is highly influenced by the quality of the information received and the dissemination tactics that are used to “spread the word” (Grajdura, Qian and Niemeier, 2021, p. 2). Local authorities used media to reach all populations and inform them about the evacuation procedures. Nonetheless, the communication strategies used by the agencies were general and did not particularly include the needs of the marginalized population groups. However, the large scope of damage to households and infrastructure demonstrates that the timeliness of firefighters’ response and the resources available to first responders were insufficient to manage such a fast-spreading disaster.

In the aftermath of the incident, the authorities used multiple channels of communication to deliver messages addressing the outcomes of the disaster. In particular, at the local level, the government spread the information among the citizens to inform them about shelters, financial aid for recovery, and other survival information. Californian authorities engaged in cooperation with emergency management agencies and non-profit organizations to inspect the damaged areas and estimate the level of damage caused. Special grants and funds were launched to help the survivors of the disaster repair their homes and obtain accommodation in the aftermath of the emergency (FEMA, 2021). To disseminate this information and available recovery aid opportunities to the public, the authorities used social media, news programs, and broadcasting agencies. In such a manner, the population was provided with necessary information as per the guidance on how to act further.

Generated Communication Strategy

The review of California wildfires demonstrated that such a drastic natural disaster imposes a significant burden on the responsible agencies. The fast pace of the incident unfolding and the uncontrolled and often unpredictable nature of such kind of disaster limit the time for informing the citizens about the hazard and giving guidance on when and where to evacuate. While there are multiple obstacles to effective and timely emergency response, the chances to reach the groups of the public that might be difficult to inform even grows. Indeed, “disaster survivors from socially marginalized groups, including low-income residents and communities of color, are most at risk of experiencing long-term housing issues following disasters” (Rosenthal, Stover and Haar, 2021, para. 8). Therefore, these vulnerable populations might be the most difficult to communicate emergency messages to due to their marginalized status. Overall, “successful public communication seeks to balance the needs and expectations of all of these diverse audiences and speak to each of them while not miscommunicating to the remainder” (Haupt, 2021, p. 128). In addition, people representing an elderly generation might also be considered the population that would be the most difficult to inform due to the limited channels of information exchange available to them.

In order to achieve success in the appropriate dissemination of warning messages for evacuation or disaster prevention, special efforts should be made by authorities. According to Généreux et al . (2021), communication strategies that are deemed most pertinent under such circumstances include those that eliminate the promotion of fear in public and send clear messages addressing pivotal psychological factors that might play a decisive role in addressing the emergency. Only credible and authoritative information should be distributed across conventional and non-conventional communication channels. Indeed, since older people or those marginalized might have no access to smartphones, social media might not be an effective channel to reach these populations (Grajdura, Qian, and Niemeier, 2021). When provided with a clear and timely message, people will not waste valuable time seeking additional information or clarification (Haupt, 2021). It is imperative to include TV and radio as the communication media to ensure that all individuals obtain clear guidance on how to act in an emergency.

Another important strategy in the communication of emergency response is multilingual messages to ensure that people with limited language proficiency understand the situation and comprehend the plan of action. Furthermore, consistency is another pivotal element in an effective communication strategy designed to warn the public about a disaster. Proper behavior should be designed in clear step-by-step instructions with key contacts and locations of emergency rooms, shelters, and food centers provided in a timely manner. The instructions should be simple to avoid confusion under the stressful and hectic circumstances of wildfire. The fast pace of fire spreading should be emphasized to ensure that people act instantly and evacuate immediately, taking only the most necessary possessions with them without wasting time.

Since wildfires are particularly dependent on weather changes, such as temperatures, humidity, and wind speed, and direction, the interaction of authorities with meteorological centers is imperative. Indeed, the frequent occurrence of wildfires in different states of the USA, especially in California, serves as a factor of being equipped with data for better response to the emergency in the future. The awareness of risks should be informed by the close cooperation between the emergency management agencies and departments for immediate action in case of necessity. Research suggests that “disasters are also known to have considerable impacts on social determinants of health, such as housing and employment” (Rosenthal, Stover and Haar, 2021, para. 8). That is why people’s concerns about their health and dwellings should be addressed as they reach the emergency points. Thus, timeliness, clarity, consistency, availability, multilingual messages constitute the essential elements of an effective emergency response communication strategy.

In summation, the review of the work of first responders to the California wildfire disaster allows for stating that the response was effective. The evacuation messages were disseminated successfully and in a timely manner. People were evacuated swiftly, which guaranteed saved lives. However, despite the predictability of the emergency, the resources and efforts of the authorities were insufficient to save the dwellings and infrastructure of multiple towns. Also, the subsequent actions aimed at informing people about aid, financial support, healthcare, and shelter services were generalized and insufficiently addressed the needs of marginalized population groups. Therefore, it is imperative to integrate a more effective communication strategy that would include consistent, timely, and clear messages available to diverse populations at all levels of emergency response.

Recommendations

The studied incident and the review and analysis of California wildfires that happened in 2021 allow for making several recommendations for Qatar. Although the country does not have a high risk of wildfires in general, there are multiple factors that might cause this natural disaster to unfold in any area. For example, droughts, high temperatures, specific features in vegetation, wind patterns, and other weather and landscape particularities might contribute to the probability of wildfires. Moreover, since climate change impacts all countries of the world, Qatar should develop wildfire emergency response strategies. For that matter, the national authorities should learn from the experience of the USA emergency management agencies to prevent and predict such disasters. At the ‘before the disaster’ stage, the authorities should cooperate with meteorological agencies to ensure the availability of updated information on the weather conditions that might trigger fires. Also, the public should be informed about the elevated risks to prepare safety kits for the case of an emergency.

Most importantly, the crucial stage of emergency response is the messages and actions that take place during the disaster. It is imperative to borrow the same communication strategies to ensure the timely evacuation of the endangered citizens. Also, it is important not to make the mistakes made by the analyzed authorities and ensure that all the population groups, included marginalized ones, obtain clear, consistent, and credible information through communication channels available to them. At the ‘after disaster’ stage, the authorities should provide financial, healthcare, and shelter aid to the survivors by informing them about available options in a timely and comprehensive manner. Consequently, using these recommendations, the emergency response agencies of Qatar will be able to mitigate the adverse outcomes of wildfires if such should occur.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (2021) Wildfire action . Web.

Genereux, M. et al . (2021) ‘Communication strategies and media discourses in the age of COVID-19: an urgent need for action’, Health Promotion International , 36(4), pp. 1178-1185.

Grajdura, S., Qian, X., and Niemeier, D. (2021) ‘Awareness, departure, and preparation time in no-notice wildfire evacuations’, Safety Science , 139(105258). Web.

Haupt, B. (2021) ‘The use of crisis communication strategies in emergency management’, Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management , 18(2), pp. 125-150.

Rosenthal, A., Stover, E. and Haar, R.J. (2021) ‘Health and social impacts of California wildfires and the deficiencies in current recovery resources: an exploratory qualitative study of systems-level issues’ , PloS One , 16(3), p. e0248617. Web.

Yee, G. (2021) ‘President Biden approves wildfire major disaster declaration in California’, Los Angeles Times. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, November 28). California Wildfire Disaster: The Emergency Response. https://ivypanda.com/essays/california-wildfire-disaster-the-emergency-response/

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1. IvyPanda . "California Wildfire Disaster: The Emergency Response." November 28, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/california-wildfire-disaster-the-emergency-response/.

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• Original research
• Open access
• Published: 25 August 2021

Large California wildfires: 2020 fires in historical context

• Jon E. Keeley   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4564-6521 1 , 2 &
• Alexandra D. Syphard 3  

Fire Ecology volume  17 , Article number:  22 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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California in the year 2020 experienced a record breaking number of large fires. Here, we place this and other recent years in a historical context by examining records of large fire events in the state back to 1860. Since drought is commonly associated with large fire events, we investigated the relationship of large fire events to droughts over this 160 years period.

This study shows that extreme fire events such as seen in 2020 are not unknown historically, and what stands out as distinctly new is the increased number of large fires (defined here as > 10,000 ha) in the last couple years, most prominently in 2020. Nevertheless, there have been other periods with even greater numbers of large fires, e.g., 1929 had the second greatest number of large fires. In fact, the 1920’s decade stands out as one with many large fires.

Conclusions

In the last decade, there have been several years with exceptionally large fires. Earlier records show fires of similar size in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Lengthy droughts, as measured by the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), were associated with the peaks in large fires in both the 1920s and the early twenty-first century.

Antecedentes

En el año 2020, California experimentó un récord al quebrar el número de grandes incendios. Aquí situamos a éste y otros años en un contexto histórico mediante el examen de registros de incendios en el estado desde 1860. Dado que la sequía es frecuentemente asociada a grandes eventos de incendios, investigamos la relación entre grandes incendios y sequías en este período de 160 años.

Este estudio mostró que eventos extremos como el visto en 2020 no son históricamente desconocidos, y lo que se muestra como distintivamente nuevo es el incremento en el número de grandes incendios (definidos aquí como > 10.000 ha) en el último par de años, y más prominentemente en 2020. Sin embargo, ha habido otros períodos con aún mayores números de incendios (i.e. en 1929 hubo mayor número de incendios que en cualquier otro año del registro). De hecho, la década de 1920, fue una de las que presentó mayor número de grandes incendios.

Conclusiones

En la última década ha habido muchos años con incendios excepcionalmente grandes. Antiguos registros muestran incendios de tamaño similar tanto en el siglo 19 como en el siglo 20. Sequías prolongadas, medidas mediante el Índice de Sequías Severas de Palmer (PDSI), fueron asociadas con los picos de grandes incendios tanto en el siglo 20 como en el 21.

Introduction

The western US has a long history of large wildfires, and there is evidence that these were not uncommon on pre-EuroAmerican landscapes (Keane et al. 2008 ; Baker 2014 ; Lombardo et al. 2009 ). One of the biggest historical events was the 1910 “Big Blowup,” which reached epic proportions and was an important impetus for fire suppression policy (Diaz and Swetnam 2013 ). California in particular has had a history of massive wildfires such as the 100,000 ha 1889 Santiago Canyon Fire in Orange County or the similarly large 1932 Matilija Fire or 1970 Laguna Fire (Keeley and Zedler 2009 ).

While large fires are known in the historical record, in the first few decades of the twenty-first century, the pace of these events has greatly accelerated (Keeley and Syphard 2019 ). In the last decade, the state has experienced a substantial number of fires ranging from 10,000 ha to more than 100,000 ha, and these have caused massive losses of lives and property. The largest fires on record were recorded in 2018 and then were replaced with even larger fires in 2020, although some of these were the result of multiple fires that coalesced into fire complexes of massive size.

Causes for these fires are multiple, but climate change has been implicated as a critical factor (Williams et al. 2019 ; Abatzoglou et al. 2019 ). Historically, drought has often been invoked as a driver of large fires (Keeley and Zedler 2009 ; Diaz and Swetnam 2013 ), and California has experienced an unprecedented drought in the last decade (Robeson 2015 ). However, factors such as management impacts on forest structure and fuel accumulation, made worse by the recent drought, are critically important in some ecosystems (Stephens et al. 2018 ).

To put these recent fires in a historical context, we have investigated the history of large wildfires in California. “Large” fires is an arbitrary designation, e.g., Nagy et al. ( 2018 ) considered it to be 1000 ha or more. Our focus, however, is on those fires that made 2020 particularly noteworthy; so we define large fires as those in the top 1–2% of all fires, which is approximated by fires > 10,000 ha. In addition, we have examined the relationship of large fires to drought.

The database of fires > 10,000 ha was assembled from diverse sources. From 1950 to the present, the State of California Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) fire history database was relatively complete, but less so prior to 1950 (Syphard and Keeley 2016 ; Miller et al. 2021 ). In California, US Forest Service (USFS) annual reports provide statistics on fires by ignition source and area burned back to 1910 and Cal Fire back to 1919 (Keeley and Syphard 2017 ), and although these reports focused on annual summaries, they often provided descriptions of very large fires. A rich but under-utilized historical record for early years was the exhaustive compilation of fires in a diversity of documents from 1848 to 1937, assembled by a USFS project and brought to our attention by Cermak’s ( 2005 ) USFS report on Region 5 fire history. This source presents all documents (including agency reports and newspaper reports on fire, vegetation, timber harvesting and Native Americans) for all counties in the state and comprises 69 bound volumes (USDA Forest Service 1939-1941 ). We utilized these documents where they presented data on fire size, either an estimate of acres burned or dimensions of the burned area. We did not include fire reports that lacked a clear indication of area burned; e.g., the 1848 fire described in the region of Eldorado County referred to an immense plain on fire and all the hills blackened for an extensive distance (USDA Forest Service 1939-1941 ), but lacked more precise measures.

Other sources included the following: Barrett ( 1935 ), based on USFS records and personal experiences as well as “early-day diaries, historical works, magazines and newspapers.” Greenlee and Moldenke ( 1982 ) included fire records from state and federal agencies as well as library and museum archives. Morford ( 1984 ) was based on unpublished USFS records accumulated during the author’s 41 years in that agency. Keeley and Zedler ( 2009 ) was based on records retrieved from the California State Archives and State Library. Cal Fire ( 2020 ) data, not part of the FRAP database, included agency records of individual fire reports (not available to the public but searchable by the State Fire Marshall Kate Dobrinsky). In a few cases, the same fire was reported by more than one source, sometimes with different sizes; when this occurred after 1950, we used the FRAP data and before that either Cermak ( 2005 ) or Barrett ( 1935 ) over other sources.

Reliability of these data sources is an important question to address. Stephens ( 2005 ) contended that USFS data before 1940 were unreliable, an assertion based on Mitchell ( 1947 ); but Mitchell ( 1947 ) provided no evidence that early data were inaccurate, only that many states lacked early records. Mitchell ( 1947 ) was considering availability of state and federal data for the entire USA; however, California has far better historical records at both the state and federal archives than much of the USA (Keeley and Syphard 2017 ). USFS records for California were reported annually for all forests beginning in 1910 and for state protected lands by Cal Fire back to 1919. The latter agency had by 1920 several hundred fire wardens strategically placed throughout the state and each warden was held to a strict standard of reporting all fires in their jurisdiction.

Before 1910, data on fires was dependent on unpublished reports available in state and federal archives, observations published in books, data given in newspaper accounts of fire events, and estimates from fire-scar chronology studies. It was suggested by Goforth and Minnich ( 2007 ) that early newspaper reports were exaggerations and represented “yellow journalism,” a pejorative term that connoted unethical journalism. This was based on what they considered sensational headlines, but comparison of nineteenth century with more recent newspaper headlines provides no basis for this conclusion (Keeley and Zedler 2009 ). As a journalist colleague suggested, “a century-old newspaper story is not a precise source …[but] is the first draft of history and a valuable source of first person account from long past events.” Such information qualifies as scientific evidence, which is defined as evidence that serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis, is empirical, and interpretable in accordance with scientific method. The data we present falls within these bounds and that includes newspaper reports as we used data on fire size in terms of acres or dimensions of burned landscape reported. Recently Howard et al. ( 2021 ) demonstrated that fire-scar records match newspaper accounts in the eastern US. To address the issue of how close newspaper accounts used in this study come to accurately depicting fire size, we have compared fires reported in published sources with newspapers where available. We of course appreciate that early accounts lacked the precise technology available today for outlining fire perimeters; however, this lack of precision does not necessarily translate into less accurate accounts and applies to both newspapers as well as state and federal agencies.

Data were presented for the state and by NOAA divisions North Coast (1), North Interior (2), Central Coast (4), Sierra Nevada (5), and South Coast (6). These are the five most fire-prone divisions of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center categories, defined as climatically homogenous areas (Guttman and Quayle 1996 ). There of course are other systems that may be useful for comparisons, dependent on the need. For example, the Bailey Ecoregions (Bailey 1980 ), which separates regions by vegetation type, might be thought preferable, but, for our purposes, there is no necessary advantage as large fires usually burn across a mosaic of different vegetation types. A system that might provide a better presentation would be the recently described Fire Regime Ecoregions (Syphard and Keeley 2020 ). However, despite limitations to the NOAA divisions (e.g., Vose et al. 2014 ), it is preferable due to the availability of historical annual data on the Palmer Drought Severity index calculated by NOAA divisions.

Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) was recorded for each year from two sources. From 1895 to 2020, PDSI was the annual mean from NOAA ( 2020a ), and for years prior to 1895, summer PDSI was reconstructed from tree-ring studies (Cook et al. 1999 ). Statistical analysis and graphical presentation were conducted with Systat software (ver. 13.0, Systat Software, Inc., San Jose, CA, http://www.systat.com/ ).

Since some of the fires came from data reported in newspapers, not a typical scientific data base, we did an initial investigation comparing FRAP reported fire size with size reported in newspaper reports. This was not an exhaustive study since FRAP data before 1950 presents relatively few fires by date or fire name making it difficult to match up fires with newspaper reports; however, we found half a dozen potential comparisons (Table 1 ). As to be expected these different reports are not identical in fire size, however, they were quite similar; sometimes, newspapers over reported area burn but other times under reported, although most importantly, they were of similar magnitude as those in the FRAP database. Data sources varied over time (Table 2 ); from 1950 to the present, large fires were all recorded in the FRAP database. Prior to that year, sources were mostly from USFS ( 1939-1941 ).

Fire size of all fires over 10,000 ha during the last 160 years are shown in Fig. 1 a. Exceptionally large fires followed a bimodal pattern with peaks in the nineteenth century and again in the twenty-first century, separated by a low point in the 1950s. From 1860 to 1950, there was a significant decrease in large fire size followed by a significant increase in the second half of the record. Although the trends were highly significant, the great year to year variation in size of large fires, gave low r 2 values, indicating limited ability to predict fire size for any given year.

a Fire size for large fires from 1860 to 2020. b Frequency of large fires over this same time period

To illustrate the temporal distribution of record-breaking fires, we picked the top 3% ( n = 12) of all fires based on size, and these are shown in (Table 3 ). Not surprisingly, 5 occurred in the year 2020; however, four occurred in the nineteenth century.

The data presented in this paper greatly expands our understanding of the history of large fires in California. To date, our dependence has been on the FRAP database and they clearly acknowledge their records are for fires from 1950 to the present, and this is borne out by our analysis (Table 2 ), but the records presented here extend the fire history back nearly a century. Over the period from 1860 to the present, yearly frequency of fires over 10,000 ha exhibited several prominent peaks (Fig. 1 b). A few peak years occurred in the 1920s, with one of the highest frequencies recorded throughout the entire 160 year record in 1929. There were also peaks in 2007 and 2008 and again in 2018 and 2020.

Through time, the distribution of fire size varied between NOAA divisions (Fig. 2 ). The North Interior (2), Sierra Nevada (5), and South Coast (6) divisions all exhibited a significant decline in fire size from the nineteenth century till 1950. Although all the regions exhibited the largest fires in the last decade, only in the Central Coast (4) was this significant for the years 1950–2020.

Large fires within NOAA Divisions. Statistics are presented for significant trends

Frequency of fires over 10,000 ha are presented by decade for each of the five divisions (Fig. 3 ). Consistent with the statewide pattern (Fig. 1 b), all showed a spike in number of large fires in the 1920s and again after 2000. The 1920s peak was particularly prominent in the Sierra Nevada (5) and South Coast. Also, for the Central Coast and Central Sierra Nevada regions, the number of fires in the 1920s was higher than that for recent years. For the years 1860 to 1949 and for the years 1950 to 2020 separately, there was no significant change in frequency over time.

Decadal frequency of large fires within NOAA Divisions. Note the decade 2020 is represented by a single year.

One aspect of climate over the entire period is captured by the PDSI, a drought index that includes patterns of both precipitation and temperature. There have been several periods of drought over the past 160 years, the most severe being in the decades 1920-1930 and 1990-2020 (Fig. 4 a). These periods also correlate with periods of large amounts of area burned by large fires (Fig. 4 b). Bivariate regression analysis showed that over the period from 1860 to 2020, there was a significant relationship between PDSI and area burned (adj r 2 = 0.429, P = 0.003).

a PDSI for the decades from 1860 to 2020. b Area burned by fires > 10,000 ha for the decades from 1860 to 2020. Note the decade 2020 is represented by a single year

Clearly, 2020 was a phenomenal fire year in California for record breaking large fires. However, this study shows that such extreme fire events are not unknown historically, and what stands out as distinctly new is the increased number of large fires (defined here as > 10,000 ha) in the last couple of years, most prominently in 2020. Given that historically we have seen years with even greater number of large fire events, e.g., 1929, a comprehensive evaluation of the factors leading up to large fire event years is clearly needed.

The largest fire in recorded history for the state is the 2020 August Complex Fire, which comprised 38 separate fires that were considered a single a massive 418,000 ha fire (Cal Fire 2020 ). Thus, the merging of these multiple fires into a larger event is certainly a factor affecting “fire” size. Indeed, some 2020 fire complexes included multiple fires that never actually merged; for example, the LNU Complex Fire, which ranked within the top 12 fires (Table 3 ), actually comprised several distinctly separate fires that apparently did not merge (San Francisco Chronicle 2020 ).

It has been contended that large fires in the past were often very different in nature from contemporary large fires. For example, many southwestern US mixed conifer forest large fire events in the nineteenth century were low-intensity surface fires, unlike contemporary large fires that are dominated by high-intensity crown fire (Keane et al. 2008 ). This contention, however, varies from descriptions of the top 12 fires recorded here (Table 3 ). For example, when describing the 1889 Plumas fire, newspaper reports state “A large amount of timber and fire wood [were] destroyed.” One report describes the 1891 Eldorado fire as “the most terrible forest fire ever experienced in California…fanned by a strong north wind has swept over almost the entire stretch of country between Georgetown and Salmon Falls…Magnificent forests of a few days ago have been burned over and blackened and lofty pines seared and killed. The scene at night baffles all powers of description, there being a moving mass of fire as far as the eye can reach.” The 1909 Santa Cruz fire was described as “this large conflagration spread… [and] the country is entirely burned over; the entire growth on Loma Prieta Peak and its sides down to Los Gatos Creek is a charred area.”

In general, very few of the large fires reported in (USDA Forest Service 1939-1941 ) were described as low-intensity surface fires. This source described forest fires up and down the state as high intensity conflagrations. For instance, in San Diego County, the 19,000 ha fire of 1870 was described as “the fires which have been raging in the mountains …are wholly unprecedented in extent and …destruction of timber”; in the San Luis Obispo 1869 40,000 ha fire “a great deal of timber and grass has been destroyed”; in Calavaras County in 1889, an 81,000 ha fire was described “A large forest fire has been raging…a large scope of timber country has been laid in waste”; a description of the Tehama 1889 30,000 ha fire was “The forest fire that has raged...was very destructive”, etc. In short, there is little in these records to suggest that nineteenth century large fires were normally less destructive of natural resources than twenty-first century fires. This of course is not meant to negate the commonly accepted paradigm that California forests in the past frequently burned with low-intensity surface fires (Skinner and Chang 1996 ), but that once fires reached epic proportions, and consequently burned through a mosaic of vegetation types, fire behavior appears to have been quite different.

However, one thing that is different between historical large fires and recent ones is that contemporary large fire events are often much more destructive in terms of loss of lives and property. For example, the 2018 Butte County Camp Fire driven by extreme foehn winds killed 85 people and destroyed over 18,000 buildings, however, a similar foehn wind driven fire occurred in Eldorado County in 1891 (Table 3 ), and there were no reports of fatalities and relatively few structures were lost (USFS 1939-1941 ). The difference is due to changes in human demography, e.g., California population throughout the nineteenth century was fewer than 2 million people in contrast to 2020 with a population approaching 40 million. Pressure to find affordable housing has resulted in urban sprawl into watersheds of dangerous fuels (Syphard et al. 2007 , 2019 ). In addition, population growth has played a role in increasing ignitions as most fires that result in human losses are of human origin (Keeley and Syphard 2018 ).

Another factor that is very different in recent decades, when compared to the middle of the century, is the frequency of large fires, with 2007, 2008, 2017, 2018, and 2020 all being peak years for number of large fire events. However, the 1920s were comparable to these recent decades, and in fact, 1929 was a peak year for frequency of large fire events (Fig. 1 b). The1920s decade was also a peak in most regions (Fig. 3 ). Although there was less structure loss in the 1920s, demographic changes could have been involved in terms of frequency of large fires, as the 1920s saw a major influx of people. In this decade, there were increased anthropogenic ignitions driven by greater access to wildlands due to rapid road construction and an order of magnitude increase in car licenses (Keeley and Fotheringham 2001 ).

Climate is widely viewed as a determining factor in fire size, and in particular, drought has been a major driver historically (Little et al. 2016 ; Madadgar et al. 2020 ; Huang et al. 2020 ). One of the important factors behind the 2020 fire events was the anomalously long and intense drought the region experienced beginning in 2012. This drought was experienced across the southern US (Rippey 2015 ) and lasted 3–5 years in California; it was considered to be one of the most severe droughts in California history (Robeson 2015 ; Jacobsen and Pratt 2018 ). The greatest number of recent large fires and size of these fires have been concentrated in the years since this drought (Fig. 4 ). Drought has also been implicated as a factor in other large California fires during the first decade of the twenty-first century (Keeley and Zedler 2009 ) as well as with large fire events in the 1920s, as shown in this study.

While a clear climate signal in terms of drought is a likely driver of big fire events in the state, an emerging issue is the role of anthropogenic climate change (Williams et al. 2019 ). While droughts have historically been a natural occurrence in California’s Mediterranean climate ecosystems, it has been postulated that global warming has made these droughts more severe. Estimates are that the 2012–2014 drought in the Sierra Nevada was perhaps 10–15% more severe due to global warming (Williams et al. 2015 ). This has important implications for the impact of drought on tree and shrub dieback that increases hazardous fuels and contributes to increased fire risk (Stephens et al. 2018 ). However, the relationship between drought and tree dieback in the state is complicated and impacted by competition and other factors (Das et al. 2011 ; Young et al. 2017 ).

The severity of the 2020 fire season in California is not the result of any one factor such as climate change but the result of the “perfect storm” of events. Winter and spring precipitation in the northern part of the state was only about 50% of average, August had a stream of dry lightning storms in northern California that ignited over 5000 fires (Cal Fire 2020 ), there was an intense heat wave in early September that elevated temperatures to record breaking levels (NOAA 2020b ), and forests in the northern half of the state had anomalous fuel loads due to a century of fire suppression and greatly exacerbated by the intense drought of 2012–2015 (Stephens et al. 2018 ).

It is a major challenge to parse out the role of anthropogenic climate change in driving 2020 fires. Certainly, the below normal rainfall year in the north fell within the natural range of variation. The extraordinary lighting storm was perhaps more severe than what is seen in most years, but was not at all unprecedented; e.g., in 2008 northern California experienced a similar event with over 6000 lightning strikes and burning over 400,000 ha from these fires alone, and this is a common phenomenon at a decadal scale, e.g., 1999, 1987, 1977, 1955 (Cal Fire 2008 ). Further contributing to the 2020 fires was the intense heat wave that may be linked to climate change (Gershunov and Guirguis 2012 ; Hully et al. 2020 ). The role of anomalous fuel accumulation due to more than a century of fire suppression and made much worse by 2012–2016 drought was also a major contributor to the size of these fires.

Historically, California fires as big as some of the largest fires in 2020 year have occurred as evident from records beginning in 1860. However, without question, 2020 was an extraordinary year for fires in California. This was driven by a multitude of factors but prominently is the extraordinary droughts the state has experienced in the last couple decades. Peaks in the number of large fires have occurred in the 1920s as well as in the twenty-first century and both occurred in decades with extended droughts.

Availability of data and materials

Data from published sources listed in the “Methods” section.

Abbreviations

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

Cal Fire’s Fire and Resource Assessment Program

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Palmer Drought Severity Index

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Climate change is worsening California’s hellish wildfires

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Like a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge escorted by the Ghost of Summers Yet to Come, California is catching a glimpse of its future summer weather. The view is a hellish one.

Within a two-week span in August, California saw:

– the “ fire tornado ” just north of Lake Tahoe – 130 degrees Fahrenheit heat in Death Valley, which may be the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth – a largely dry thunderstorm with 11,000 lightning strikes across California over 72 hours, igniting more than 300 wildfires, including two of the three largest ever recorded in the state (and still growing), creating the worst air quality in the world – one million acres burned in California in 2020 with 4 months to go in fire season – tens of thousands of people evacuated from their homes as the fires drew near – rolling power blackouts during a record heat wave – gray, unhealthy air. A blood red sun. Flakes falling from the sky, coating everything below in a layer of white… not snow, but ash.

These ghastly scenes all bear links to climate change, and as a result, climate scientists expect them to occur more frequently in the future as global warming continues to raise temperatures and dry the landscape. As California Gov. Gavin Newsom put it in a recording for the Democratic National Convention, “Climate change is real. If you are in denial about climate change, come to California.”

Better yet, don’t. At least not right now.

The heat dome punishing the American Southwest

California’s severe August weather is linked to a ridge of high pressure, also referred to as a “heat dome,” stuck over the American Southwest. The heat dome pulled moisture from a tropical storm in the Pacific, fueling rare summer storms that triggered the thousands of lightning strikes that have ignited wildfires across the state. The hot air inside the dome contributed to the record heat, which evaporated most of the storm’s precipitation before it could reach the ground. The hot and dry conditions on the ground created more fuel for the fires to spread farther and faster.

According to meteorologist Ryan Maue , as reported in the Washington Post, almost all of the high-powered heat domes over the past six decades have occurred since 1983, and the overwhelming majority of those since 1990. Climate scientists will need to investigate the role that climate change played in the evolution of this particular heat dome. However, a growing body of research suggests that human-caused global warming increases the frequency with which such high-pressure ridges get stuck in one place for long periods of time as a result of wavy patterns forming in a slowed jet stream .

To Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, lead author of a 2018 study on this subject, the heat dome in the American Southwest looks familiar.

“The extreme heat out West right now is associated with a very strong, stable ridge that resembles, in both its persistence and intensity, the ridge that gave us unprecedented heat, drought and wildfire out west in mid-summer 2018 ,” Mann said in an email exchange. “Knowing that, I would venture a guess that the same atmospheric phenomenon (planetary wave resonance) that was responsible for that setup and the unusually persistent weather extremes in Europe and elsewhere at that time might be playing a role here too. But that assessment will need to be performed by actually doing the diagnostics.”

Climate change is a ‘wildfire threat multiplier’

Climate change has played a key role in worsening western wildfires. In a new study in Environmental Research Letters, a number of foremost experts on California wildfires concluded that the combination of rising temperatures and declining autumn rain – both of which are linked to climate change – over just the past four decades has more than doubled the number of fall days with extreme fire weather conditions. Those findings are consistent with a 2016 study concluding that human-caused climate change doubled the area burned in western U.S. forests since the 1980s.

President Trump, as he has done previously, again blamed the California wildfires on a failure to “ clean your floors … clean your forests .” However, as the new Environmental Research Letters study concluded, “demographic and forest management factors alone are insufficient to explain the magnitude of the observed increase in wildfire extent over the past half-century.” Climate change is playing the largest role in worsening California wildfires, and the study authors described it as “a wildfire ‘threat multiplier’ amplifying natural and human risk factors that are already prevalent throughout California.”

As UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain and colleagues found in a 2018 study , climate change is shifting precipitation patterns in California, leading to more rain in the winter but less in the autumn and spring seasons, bookending the state’s already dry summer months and lengthening the annual wildfire season. Wildfire threats associated with normal weather variations, like California’s already low 2020 precipitation at just 62% of average, are amplified by the rising temperatures and decreasing autumn rainfall caused by climate change.

Scientists can’t yet say whether climate change played a role in the rare lightning storms that ignited the August 2020 fires, but it certainly exacerbated the hot and dry conditions that allowed the wildfires to spread farther and faster.

Wildfires and COVID attack the same organs

The wildfire smoke has spread across much of the state, often deteriorating air quality to levels deemed “unhealthy” or “hazardous.” Climate scientist Drew Shindell has incorporated air pollution data into climate models and recently presented his findings in testimony to Congress . He concluded that the adverse impacts of air pollution and heat are much worse than previously thought, “roughly double those that would have been obtained using older evidence,” while air pollution “damages lungs, hearts, brains, skin and other organs … affecting virtually all systems in the human body.”

Also see: How to protect yourself from wildfire smoke

The 2020 wildfires of course overlap the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which likewise damages lungs and also hearts, brains, and other organs . The virus has spread particularly rapidly through several prisons, many of whose inmates California uses to fight wildfires for $2 to $5 per day plus $1 per hour when out fighting fires. As a result, only 90 of the state prisons’ 192 inmate fire teams are available to assist with the wildfires this summer. Prison inmates normally account for 23% of California’s wildfire fighters. Thus the pandemic is putting a strain on the state’s fire-fighting resources, which are already thinly spread in light of the sheer number and size of the August 2020 wildfires across the state.

California’s perfect storm

California in August 2020s is experiencing its version of a “perfect storm”: A heat wave caused by a high-pressure dome, which also triggered rare lightning storms, igniting hundreds of wildfires across the state during a relatively dry year with an ongoing pandemic. High electricity demand during the record heatwave also combined with poor planning by electric grid operators , resulting in isolated rolling blackouts over two days.

Some parties have exploited this unfortunate situation to blame renewable energy for the blackouts, but in reality, a number of factors played a role, including reduced production from fossil fuel gas plants that struggled to operate in the heat.

In the end, experts agree that the only way to lessen the threat-multiplying effects of climate change is to slow global warming by transitioning away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible, while building a smarter and greener power grid that can handle the added stresses brought on by the kinds of extreme climate change-amplified weather California is suffering through.

Like Ebenezer Scrooge in the Dickens story, we still have the ability to change our future outlook for the better.

Dana Nuccitelli

Dana Nuccitelli, research coordinator for the nonprofit Citizens' Climate Lobby, is an environmental scientist, writer, and author of 'Climatology versus Pseudoscience,' published in 2015. He has published... More by Dana Nuccitelli

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The Fires California Grieves—And Needs

In her scorched klamath mountains community, a fire advisor contemplates mortality and renewal.

The author’s favorite hometown swimming hole, on the South Fork Trinity River in Forest Glen, California, after last year’s devastating August Complex fire.  Courtesy of Lenya Quinn-Davidson.

by Lenya Quinn-Davidson | July 19, 2021

On a recent Sunday, I lay alone by my favorite hometown swimming hole, taking in the familiar sensations of the South Fork Trinity River. The hot sun, the light up-canyon wind—sending mist over me each time it swirled past the falls—the buzz and clicking of grasshoppers, the distant sound of trucks passing by on the rural highway above. I looked down at my body and thought how remarkable it was that I’m still me, all these decades later, and the rocks and the trail and the river are still here, moving through time with steady grace. I hadn’t returned to this remote spot in years, but it still felt like home.

Beyond the river corridor, though, things were stark and unfamiliar.

In one hot, windy day last August, fire had dramatically changed this place. Flames ripped across this piece of the river canyon, killing almost every tree in their path and exposing the bare, naked soil beneath. Called the August Complex, it was the largest fire in recorded history, burning more than a million acres of forestland and woodland.

This town, Forest Glen, marked the northern edge of the blaze. It may be one of the smallest towns in California—with only 10 permanent residents—but it has always had a palpable personality, a spirit. When I drove through it that day, taking in the transformation, my eyes welled with tears over the loss. My own hometown, Hayfork, is slightly bigger and 21 miles away, but the grief has rippled out like a stone dropped in water. Mortality is heavy in hand here.

I am on the cusp of 40 years old—only 6 more months until I turn that corner. One thing they don’t tell you about turning 40 is that everyone around you starts dying around then, especially if you are lucky enough to come from a community of loving adults—your parents, their friends, the “aunties” and “uncles” who have known you since birth. One day you’re a kid and they’re looking after you, and the next day you’re 39 and a half, and they’re disappearing, one by one.

After sitting by the river that day, I wound over the mountains and dropped into the valley of my hometown—one of the two largest valleys in the Klamath Mountains, framed on all sides by signs of past fire: snag patches and dead trees, clusters of thick wildflowers, open oak woodlands and meadows, barren ridgetops. This place, my home, has so many fire stories to tell. And my stories are layered there, too, simultaneously dead and alive, just like the fire footprints that surround them.

As in many recent years, the 2020 fire season was record breaking. More than 4.2 million acres burned in California, and smoke blackened the sky, even here by the ocean. Fires burned through coastal redwood forests and scorched giant sequoias in the Sierra Nevada, testing the evolutionary adaptations that have carried some of those trees through thousands of years of fire. Recent reports from Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks tell us that 10 percent of the world’s mature giant sequoia trees died in last year’s Castle Fire, and that species was not the only one to suffer losses. With each severe fire season, we lose old pumpkin pines, ancient oaks, and beloved stands of mixed conifer and hardwood, in addition to the structures and other built features that also define home for us.

The loss of familiar landscapes, of specific trees or viewsheds, is the deepest kind of loss—not unlike losing a home or a family member. People are a product of place, and when we lose our sense of place, we lose our identity.

Dave Daley, a Butte County rancher, put words to this deep grief last year , after the Bear Fire burned through his mountain cattle range on the Plumas National Forest:

The fire destroyed our cattle range, our cattle, and even worse our family legacy. Someone asked my daughter if I had lost our family home. She told them “No, that would be replaceable. This is not!” I would gladly sleep in my truck for the rest of my life to have our mountains back. I am enveloped by overwhelming sadness and grief, and then anger. I’m angry at everyone, and no one. Grieving for things lost that will never be the same. I wake myself weeping almost soundlessly…it is hard to stop.

Such losses have manifested over more than a century of mismanagement and bad politics—and maybe most importantly, an increasing disconnect between people and place.

Before European settlement in California, scientists estimate that at least 4.5 million acres burned every year across the state . That’s right—California used to see more fire every year than what we saw in last year’s “historic” fire season.

Though it’s difficult to parse out historical ignition patterns, we know that Native Californians contributed in significant ways to California’s fire regimes, actively shaping landscapes with fire to sustain their cultures and livelihoods. Some fire scientists estimate that Native Americans may have intentionally burned up to 2 million acres a year. Research from the Sierra Nevada tells us that during periods where people were most actively managing their landscapes, and using fire as a tool, climate fluctuations like drought and extreme temperatures were less likely to influence how fires burned.

However, in the early 1900s, this practice of cultural burning was criminalized when federal and state officials initiated an era of fire suppression. The stated goal was to save trees—to protect forests from the very process that had shaped and maintained them through time. Yet we know now those losses weren’t avoided; rather, by removing fire, the losses were stalled, accentuated. It’s clear that the fires that burn now are making up for generations of missed fire. The more we’ve rejected fire as the natural—and human—process that it is, the more volatile it has become.

During last year’s devastating Slater Fire, Bill Tripp, the deputy director of eco-cultural revitalization for the Karuk Tribe, wrote a powerful op-ed reflecting on his people’s connection with fire, and the federal and state policies and practices that continue to this day to threaten their ecology and culture. Just as the land was taken from the Karuk people, so too was their relationship with fire. Bill explained that Karuk people were shot for burning, even as recently as the 1930s, and he lamented the way that fire continues to be misunderstood and mismanaged:

Fire itself is sacred. It renews life. It shades rivers and cools the water’s temperature. It clears brush and makes for sufficient food for large animals. It changes the molecular structure of traditional food and fiber resources making them nutrient dense and more pliable. Fire does so much more than western science currently understands.

Dominant society has missed the mark this last century or so, trying to make static what is so naturally dynamic. We suppressed fire in the name of the trees, but we forgot about the people and the plants and the landscapes that needed fire, as vital as rain or sunshine or snow. Fire can be deadly, but at its core it’s a force of life—refreshing and renewing.

Now it’s early summer, and those of us who work in fire are bracing for yet another record-breaking season. With a backdrop of extreme heat, drought, and unusually dry vegetation, it’s hard to imagine a different outcome. Fire season feels a lot like turning 40: You’re not sure what—or who—the next loss will be, but you know it’s coming. And knowing doesn’t mean you’re ready.

In my work, I focus on bringing fire back. As a fire advisor, I work with individual landowners, tribes and cultural practitioners, community groups, and agencies to build capacity for prescribed fire—to set intentional fires that provide ecological and social benefits, reducing fire hazard but also restoring wildlife habitat and biodiversity, eradicating invasive species, and restoring landscape and community resilience. The idea is to rebuild the relationship between people and fire, and to empower the kinds of change that might bring us back into balance.

Red catchfly flowering among burnt logs in Forest Glen. Native cultures in California understood that fire renews life. This knowledge influences innovative policies that hope to harness fire to promote healthy ecosystems. Courtesy of Lenya Quinn-Davidson.

One of my biggest priorities is to foster innovation and inclusivity in fire management—to bring new, and often oppressed, perspectives and ideas to these increasingly wicked problems. Diversity begets creativity. To this end, I work with partners to create opportunities for under-represented groups in fire, with a focus on women. Much of my work in this arena is through the Women-in-Fire Training Exchange (WTREX), which is international in scope. Here in California, I also work with local communities to bring fire back as a land management tool, and to promote policies that support and elevate those efforts. I have found that people are desperate for positive connections, both with each other and with fire, and this work is the perfect venue to fill some of those gaps.

Recent years have seen an uprising around prescribed fire—a movement—as we Californians explore and reclaim our role in this fire-adapted state. Community-based burn cooperatives have sprung up across the state, providing training, resources, and inspiration for landowners, volunteer fire departments, and community members. Legislators, too, are working to tackle some of the major barriers to prescribed fire, like liability . We are seeing more commitment, both institutional and financial, by our federal and state agencies, as they try to grow and improve their prescribed fire programs. After more than a decade of working on these issues, I am more heartened than ever by the interest and momentum around prescribed fire. We’re finally seeing that we can choose to fight fire, or we can carry it with us.

When I was a kid, my dad talked about a death dream he’d had. He was falling from a cliff, but unlike most dreams where you awaken before you hit bottom, in this dream my dad actually hit the ground and died. He said it was an explosion of color, bright and warm and welcoming. It wasn’t an end, but the beginning of something different. When he died some years later, I was comforted by that story. I still think of it now, as time brings mortality increasingly into focus.

As I hiked out of Forest Glen that day, I looked across the river and saw a pool of orange in a draw behind a boulder: a thicket of wild tiger lilies. Up the trail, nestled in the blackened logs, were bright red catchflies and clusters of fresh, oily poison oak leaves. In that moment, I knew this place wasn’t dead; it was different than I knew, but it was still alive—growing, changing.

It occurred to me that our landscapes are likely closest to death when we freeze them in time—when our need for the familiar interrupts their need for process, when we inadvertently choose big losses by avoiding all the small ones. The changes in Forest Glen didn’t happen in one day last summer; rather, they’d been brewing over more than a century of fire suppression and forest management. Maybe our job now is to gain a bigger perspective—to learn to love process rather than just place. And maybe 40 is my next small fire, an opportunity to refresh and renew, to unleash new parts of myself as I let go of others. I think I’m ready.

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The Californians with nowhere to go as wildfires rage – photo essay

Tens of thousands have been forced to leave their homes to escape the flames. Photographer Rachel Bujalski meets evacuees

A t the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, California, Michelle and Carlos Jacinto sat in their car at the fairgrounds to eat lunch and take a break from their designated temporary evacuation center. They left their home in Forestville two nights ago, as wildfires tore through the state .

They packed up the car with their dogs, pictures and important papers. Michelle and Carlos had come to this evacuation center last year during the fires, but they said this time was different: they were required to wear masks and keep distant from other people in a gymnasium.

Barbara Pagett sat in the back of her friend Kevin Denny ’s car with her cat in a carrier after arriving at a temporary evacuation center at the same fairgrounds. They had just found out the site was open after having spent two days as evacuees. After they evacuated the first night and found the Petaluma evacuation center was closed, they were forced to spend $300 for two nights at a hotel.

Dennis O’Leary and his wife, Patricia , set up their sleeping bags in a park in Forestville, where they would spend their second night after evacuating from Guerneville.

“We didn’t want to end up in a crowded place and didn’t want to go too far from where we live and thought we could stay in this park. Everyone in Forestville has been really understanding, and they opened the park bathrooms for us and all the restaurants are close for resources if we need.”

Katherine Champion and her friend Chris Dawson sat at the parking lot in Forestville after evacuating from their home in Rio Nido and contemplated where to go next. Katherine said her dad had called her and said she needed to evacuate since she had been waiting the fire out for two days. Tonight she said they would sleep at a friend’s house and hopefully not get moved.

Whitney Millstone sat with her partner, Wes Colunga , and her dad, Jason Millstone , at the Forestville parking lot after fleeing their home in Guerneville. A helicopter had flown over their house and announced over the intercom that they needed to leave immediately.

Whitney said: “It’s one of those moments where you’re sitting here and you’re like, ‘What else can happen in the midst of this pandemic?’ I could lose my job, I could lose everything.”

Jim Laughlin and his friend and neighbor Jean-Pierre sat outside in a community park listening to wildfire updates on the radio in Forestville, where they had slept the night before in their truck after evacuating from Guerneville.

Emely Jeanpierre folded and organized her clothes and belongings at a designated temporary evacuation zone after evacuating from the campsite where she lived on the Russian River for 12 years. Emely evacuated on Wednesday evening as mandatory orders were called in her area. In a rush, she had to bring her boats out of the water, get food for her cat and dog, pack up all her things and get out of Guerneville as quickly as possible.

Pat Spiva sat in her car in Forestville deciding where to go next after she evacuated on Tuesday from her home in the area. Her dog is sick and she needs to stay in her car to take care of him.

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Suppressing wildfires is harming California’s giant sequoia trees

California’s rare sequoias rely on high heat to disperse their seeds, and efforts to reduce the size of wildfires may be damaging their ability to reproduce

By Adam Popescu

5 April 2024

Giant sequoias in California

Shutterstock/Virrage Images

Recent years have seen some of the largest wildfires in California’s history, and one of the best approaches to limiting their damage is controlled burns that reduce natural fuel for the fires. But now, it seems these burns are destroying the state’s iconic sequoia trees.

Giant sequoias ( Sequoiadendron giganteum ) have been dying off since the early 1900s because of fire suppression. These rare trees benefit from natural fires, because they rely on high heat for seed dispersal.

The radical new experiments that hint at plant consciousness

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Wildfire smoke may be deadliest effect of climate change in us, giant sequoia trees are growing surprisingly quickly in the uk, painting a tree's pruning wounds may be useful after all, popular articles.

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California Today

How California’s Fire Season Might Shape Up This Year

It’s been a rainy winter, but that won’t necessarily mean fewer wildfires.

By Soumya Karlamangla

Luckily for us, the 2023 fire season in California was exceptionally mild.

Wildland fires burned roughly 325,000 acres and damaged 70 buildings across the state last year, making the fire season one of the least destructive in the past decade and a significant departure from some terrible recent fire years.

Nearly eight times as many acres — more than 2.5 million in all — burned in 2021, for example, as well as 3,500 structures. And the year before that was California’s worst on record, with 4.3 million acres burned.

So what kind of fire season are we in for this year?

Like 2023, this year has been a wet one . State officials announced on Tuesday that the depth of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada stood at 110 percent of the average for this time of year, an encouraging sign that the state would have plenty of water in the months ahead.

After the wet winter, vegetation in the state isn’t as parched as it would be during a drought, so wildfire activity is likely to be pretty low in the spring and early summer, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an online briefing this week.

But the year probably won’t stay as quiet as 2023 was. This year’s wet weather hasn’t been as extreme as last year’s — some inland cities, like Fresno and South Lake Tahoe, actually received less rain than usual this year — so plants and soil are more likely to dry out over the rest of this year than they were last year.

“I would be somewhat surprised if this year was not significantly more active,” Swain said.

Last summer was the coolest in California in more than a decade. Then the storm system that had been Hurricane Hilary dumped so much rain on Southern California in August — typically the peak of fire season — that it effectively ended the season there.

It’s unlikely that anything like that will happen again this year.

The danger months this year, if there are to be any, will probably be from August to October, Swain said, when there’s been enough warm, dry weather to strip vegetation of the moisture it accumulated in the winter and spring. It’s happened before that a rainy winter was followed by a fire-heavy summer and fall.

“The first half of fire season is going to tell us very little,” Swain said.

The rest of the news

Scientists conducted a test in California of a machine they hope will help slow global warming by causing the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight back into space.

Southern California

Disneyland’s Autopia attraction, a ride featuring gasoline-powered cars, will soon run on electricity instead, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Larry Lucchino, a baseball executive who oversaw the building of new ballparks for the San Diego Padres and Baltimore Orioles and renovation of Fenway Park in Boston, died at 78.

Northern California

An artists’ protest over the war in Gaza at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco has led to the resignation of the museum’s leader and a monthlong closure of its galleries .

A construction crew struck a gas line in San Francisco, causing a leak that prompted a shelter-in-place order for the city’s Sunnyside neighborhood, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

After a lush winter, flowers are in bloom across California. Send us your best photos of the glorious springtime display to [email protected] , and we may publish them in the newsletter. Please include your full name and the city in which you live.

And before you go, some good news

Sonoma County may be the heart of California’s wine country, but the region also offers an array of outdoor activities and cultural attractions for those seeking an alcohol-free visit, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The county stretching north from the Bay Area includes more than 50 miles of Pacific coastline and offers parks, rolling farmland and redwood forests for visitors to explore. The county has almost 150 miles of hiking trails and several Michelin star-rated restaurants. And for those still looking to capture the fun of a wine tasting, visitors to the city of Healdsburg can follow a “mocktail trail” studded with bars and restaurants that offer inventive alcohol-free drinks.

Jen Murphy, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, recently published a four-day Sonoma County itinerary to guide visitors who are sober, sober-curious or simply looking for a new experience of wine country.

Read the article and see the full itinerary here .

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Soumya

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword .

Maia Coleman and Briana Scalia contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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Soumya Karlamangla reports on California news and culture and is based in San Francisco. She writes the California Today newsletter. More about Soumya Karlamangla