Archives par mot-clé : Wildfires

by H. Sterling Burnett, Ar 23, 2025 in ClimateChangeDispatch

Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) ran a story blaming the unusual number of wildfires in the state in January and February on climate change. This is wrong. One year’s early start to the wildfire season can’t be blamed on climate change. [emphasis, links added]

Only a long-term trend of increasing or increasingly early wildfires would suggest climate change as a factor in this year’s fires, but no such trend exists.

A buildup of vegetation due to improved rainfall conditions in previous years, human populations expanding into the urban/forest interface, and more human-sparked fires from carelessness and arson, is the cause unusual number of wildfires starting off the year in 2025.

The WPR story, “Wisconsin sees record start to the fire season as climate change drives more blazes,” which is long on speculation but short on hard data and evidence, says:

“Wisconsin saw a record number of fires in January and February this year due to a lack of snow as climate change has set the stage for more wildfires,” says Danielle Kaeding, WPR’s environment and energy reporter for Northern Wisconsin. “Wisconsin averages 864 wildfires that burn around 1,800 acres each year, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.

“The state had already seen more than 470 fires as of Monday, double the average for this time of year. More than 1,900 acres have already been set ablaze,” Kaeding continues.

Kaeding interviewed Jim Bernier, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) forest fire section manager, about the fires, which he blamed on two years of drought caused by climate change.

“With these droughty conditions that we’re experiencing, we’re seeing these fire-staffing needs occurring more and more all year round,” Bernier said. “We’ve never had this many fires in January and February ever in the state of Wisconsin,”

Bernier’s claim is belied by the fact that Wisconsin is not in drought, and especially not an unusually severe drought.

Data from the U.S. National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) shows that in January through March of 2025, precipitation was nearly an inch above normal, with 2025 being the 35th wettest year [since] 1895. At present, no counties in Wisconsin are designated as being under Drought Disaster conditions.

Long-term drought data for Wisconsin show that over the past 30 years, drought conditions have been less severe than historically common, with the last decade being particularly wet in general. (See the graph from NIDIS, below.)

The fact that Wisconsin has not suffered unusual degrees of drought or extremely hot temperatures in recent years is confirmed in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Wisconsin State Climate Summary, which reports that the number of very hot days in Wisconsin has declined sharply over the past century, while the amount of winter and summer precipitation has either slightly increased or remained about the same.

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

Role of Climate Change in LA Wildfires “Not Statistically Significant”, Says Report Author

11 avril 2025 Alain Préat

by C. Morrison, Apr 4, 2025 in WUWT

Climate change was a major factor behind the recent Los Angeles wildfires, reported Matt McGrath of the BBC last January. According to a ‘scientific study’ instantly produced by World Weather Attribution (WWA), the prevailing weather conditions were made about 35% more likely due to humans using hydrocarbons. The WWA study, according to the trusting McGrath, is said to confirm this somewhat precise attribution of blame. Possibly the BBC and most of the mainstream that also parroted the WWA line might consider some corrective copy in the light of a devasting critique of the claims from the theoretical physicist, science writer and prominent youtuber Dr Sabine Hossenfelder. In a YouTube video broadcast here that has gone viral on social media, she elicited an astonishing admission from one of the report’s authors that, “as you can see from the numbers, the changes in intensity and likelihood are unsurprisingly not statistically significant”.

Not statistically significant is exactly what Hossenfelder found since she noted that the figures supplied by the WWA were within a 95% statistical probability level. Her broadcast goes into detail about the numbers falling within the 95% level meaning that an alternative explanation is that climate change had no part to play in the LA fires.

But the laughter has a touch of gallows humour since Hossenfelder is concerned about matters of public policy arising from such widespread fearmongering. Wildfires affect the lives of millions of people and the claims of the WWA broadcast worldwide by unquestioning activists are policy relevant numbers, she observes. People in LA need to consider their response to the recent tragedy and judge whether it will happen more frequently in the future, she says, observing: “This research matters for people’s lives.” Of course similar observations can be made about all the other mainstream pseudoscience babble designed to deliberately induce mass climate psychosis and promote the collectivist Net Zero fantasy.

Lost in all the mainstream narrative-driven madness was any report about the recent sensational scientific finding that wildfires across the United States and Canada were occurring at a rate of only 23% of that expected from a review of the tree ring fire scar record going back to the 17th century. The findings published in Nature Communications effectively blew the politicised wildfire climate change scam out of the water. It was noted that a current ”widespread fire deficit” persisted across a range of forest types, and the areas burned in the recent past “are not unprecedented”.

Such was the alarm created by these inconvenient findings that one pre-publication reviewer noted: “I see this paper as potentially being used by deniers of climate change impacts.” Advice was given to rephrase “to put even more emphasis on impact rather than burned area”. In other words, concentrate on emotion rather than facts to help produce the Ultra Processed Message that is slowly but surely destroying faith in both climate science and the useful idiot media.

…

better to know...?, climate-debate

A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned

15 février 2025 Alain Préat

by S.A. Parks et al., OPEN ACESS, Feb 10, 2025 in Nature

Abstract

Rapid increases in wildfire area burned across North American forests pose novel challenges for managers and society. Increasing area burned raises questions about whether, and to what degree, contemporary fire regimes (1984–2022) are still departed from historical fire regimes (pre-1880). We use the North American tree-ring fire-scar network (NAFSN), a multi-century record comprising >1800 fire-scar sites spanning diverse forest types, and contemporary fire perimeters to ask whether there is a contemporary fire surplus or fire deficit, and whether recent fire years are unprecedented relative to historical fire regimes. Our results indicate, despite increasing area burned in recent decades, that a widespread fire deficit persists across a range of forest types and recent years with exceptionally high area burned are not unprecedented when considering the multi-century perspective offered by fire-scarred trees. For example, ‘record’ contemporary fire years such as 2020 burned 6% of NAFSN sites—the historical average—well below the historical maximum of 29% sites that burned in 1748. Although contemporary fire extent is not unprecedented across many North American forests, there is abundant evidence that unprecedented contemporary fire severity is driving forest loss in many ecosystems and adversely impacting human lives, infrastructure, and water supplies.

…

avril 2025
L	M	M	J	V	S	D
« Mar
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30

Abstract

La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse