Hot and dry. These are the watchwords for large fires. While every
fire needs a spark to ignite and fuel to burn, the hot and dry
conditions in the atmosphere determine the likelihood of a fire
starting, its intensity and the speed at which it spreads. Over the past
several decades, as the world has increasingly warmed, so has its
potential to burn.
Since 1880, the world has warmed by 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.09 degrees
Celsius), with the five warmest years on record occurring in the last
five years. Since the 1980s, the wildfire season has lengthened across a quarter of the world's vegetated surface,
and in some places like California, fire has become nearly a year-round
risk. The year 2018 was California's worst wildfire season on record,
on the heels of a devasting 2017 fire season. In 2019, wildfires have
already burned 2.5 million acres in Alaska in an extreme fire season
driven by high temperatures, which have also led to massive fires in
Siberia."
Read the complete NASA article
Near Ebor in NSW, Australia |
Read the complete NASA article
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