#CLIMATE CHANGE: MORE TURBULENCE = HIGHER AIR FARES

Scientists from Reading University, UK, conclude that climate change is responsible for the increasing virulent turbulence over the North Atlantic that take its toll in comfort, in increased jet fuel consumption, and, ultimately, in higher air fares.

The researchers predict that commercial aircraft will experience progressively worse “clear-air” turbulence as atmospheric jet streams intensify.

Because clear-air turbulence can’t be detected by pilots, satellites or instruments, it’s a threat to the safety of passengers and to aircraft as well.

Researcher Dr Paul Williams said that a more turbulent air corridor would cause flights to divert to avoid dangerous wind speeds, thus lengthening flight times and using more fuel.

The study projects that clear-air turbulence would increase 10-40% in intensity with a 40-170% increase in the frequency of occurrence of moderate to greater turbulence.

Though the study suggests the effects of climate change would become a reality by mid-century, there is a body of evidence showing that winds are already blowing more strongly than in the past.

Moreover, the incidents of moderate to greater turbulence currently happening injure many hundreds of passengers and cost airlines tens of millions US dollars annually in fuel and structural damage to aircraft.

Source:  Smart Planet Daily, April 9, 2013    Study published in Nature Climate Change, April 5, 2013

#CLIMATE CHANGE: PENSION FUNDS, ENDOWMENTS PROPOSE DIVESTING SELVES OF #FOSSIL #FUELS

Seattle

Currently, Seattle has $17,600,000 dollars invested in Chevron and ExxonMobil and smaller investments in other gas and oil companies.

On Friday, December 21, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn sent a letter to the Seattle City Employees’ Retirement System Board urging them to “refrain from future investments in fossil fuel companies and begin the process of divesting our pension portfolio from those companies.”

The mayor references data from Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, that states “fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide in their reserves, five times the amount considered safe to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

McGinn also quotes the city’s finance director:  “The City of Seattle’s finance director informs me that two of the(Deferred Compensation Plan Committee’s) top 10 investments are with ExxonMobil and Chevron. . . , representing 0.9% of the system’s $1,900,000,000 in assets.”

Why is the mayor so keen on divestment?  He continues, “There is a clear economic argument for divestment.  While fossil fuel companies do generate a return on our investment, Seattle will suffer greater economic and financial losses from the impact of unchecked climate change.

“Our infrastructure, our businesses and our communities would face greater risk of damages and losses due to turbulent weather that climate change causes.

“As a waterfront city, several of our neighborhoods and industrial districts are at risk if climate change causes a significant rise in sea level.”

Leaving the northwest coast to look at matters on the nation’s northeast coast, divestment news comes from Maine’s Unity College.  Unity offers undergraduate education emphasizing the environment and natural resources.

Founded in 1965, in 2007 it was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Colleges.   In 2010, it was named to the Princeton Review list of the eighteen leading “green” colleges.

On Monday, November 5, the Unity College Board of Trustees unanimously voted to divest the College endowment from fossil fuels, citing the College’s commitment to sustainability.  In conjunction with the 350.org program of divestment, Unity College is now

the first to take this action.

In an editorial, Unity’s President Mulkey wrote:  “We are running out of time.  While our public policy makers equivocate and avoid the topic of climate change, the window of opportunity for salvaging a livable planet for our children and grandchildren is rapidly closing.

“The way forward is clear, though for many confrontation-averse academics the path seems impassable.  It requires action that is unnatural to the scientifically initiated:  to fight to regain the territory illegitimately occupied by the climate change deniers.

“In our zeal to be collegial, we engage with those who are paid by vested interests to argue that our Earth is not in crisis.

“When these individuals demonize public investment in alternative energy, we fail to point out how the oil industry benefited from significant taxpayer support in its infancy and continues to receive government subsidies today.

“We also sidestep the thorny issue of how oil and coal, in particular, fund large-scale organized opposition efforts to deny legitimate science, winning the battle for climate change public opinion with slogans, junk science, and money.”

At Harvard, 74% of students urge their administration to divest the college of fossil fuel investments, but to date, no action has been taken.

The City of Seattle and Unity College are among the first reported outcomes of a divestment education campaign organized by 350.org and promoted by numerous other environmental groups.  It’s modeled after a campaign in the 1980s that pressured South Africa into abandoning apartheid, thus forcing an end to the country’s racial segregation policies.

My Take on the issue of divestment:  I salute the courage and forward-thinking of McKibben, McGinn and Mulkey.

Sources:  Think Positive, December 23, 2012    Wikipedia    Unity College press release             

#CLIMATE CHANGE: WEST #ANTARCTICA ICE SHEET (WAIS) WARMING AT 3x RATE OF REST OF PLANET

 

Researchers’ analysis focuses on the temperature record from Byrd Station (indicated by star), the only source of long-term temperature observations in the area.  Black circles indicate locations of the continent’s other permanent recording stations.  The map uses color intensity to indicate the extent of warming on the ice sheet itself.    Image credit:  Julien Nicolas, courtesy of OSU

A new study by Ohio State University researchers, based on 50 years of temperature recording at Byrd Station, determines that the West Antarctica ice sheet (WAIS) is melting nearly twice as much as scientists had estimated and at triple the rate the rest of the planet is warming.

Byrd Station temperature records show an increase of 4.3 degrees F in annual temperature since 1958.

Graphic representation of ice shelf thickness changes in meters per year   Image credit NASA

“Our record suggests that continued summer warming in West Antarctica could upset the surface mass balance of the ice sheet, so that the region could make an even bigger contribution to sea level rise than it already does,” said David Bromwich, professor of geography at Ohio State University and senior research scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center.

“Even without generating significant mass loss directly, surfaces melting on the WAIS could contribute to sea level indirectly, by weakening the West Antarctic ice shelves that restrain the region’s natural ice flow into the ocean.”

Added to melting caused by a rise in surface temperatures, a recent study using NASA satellite data shows the WAIS is, according to the AP, “being eaten away from below by warm water.”   What’s being eaten away are the ice shelves that hold back a lot of Antarctic glacial ice from reaching the sea.

A separate study published earlier in the year in Nature about the basal melting of ice shelves concluded “It is reduced buttressing from the thinning ice shelves that is driving glacier acceleration and dynamic thinning.

“This implies that the most profound contemporary changes to the ice sheets and their contribution to sea level rise can be attributed to ocean thermal forcing that is sustained over decades and may have already triggered a period of unstable glacier retreat. “

Bromwich concurs.  “Lots of melting can do lots of damage to the ice shelves, . . ” and that can ramp up Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise worldwide.  “We know that these melting events can happen today, and we are likely to see more melting events.”

He believes more and reliable data about the WAIS is needed.   Nearly one third of temperature observations was missing for the time period of the study, partly because the station hasn’t always been occupied.  An automated station installed in 1980 experiences frequent power outages, usually during the long polar nights, when its solar panels can’t recharge.

The scientist says, “West Antarctica is one of the most rapidly changing regions on Earth, but it is also one of the least known.  Our study underscores the need for a reliable network of meteorological observations through West Antarctica so that we can know what is happening—and why—with more certainty.”

Sources:  Science 2.0, December 26, 2012      SmartPlanet Daily, December 26, 2012      Think Positive, December 27 and April 27, 2012       Study published in Nature Geoscience, December 23, 2012

#CLIMATE CHANGE 2012: LOWER U.S. HAD 362 ALL-TIME RECORD HIGHS AND 0 LOWS

Image credit Forecast the Facts

The above image translates the data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climate Data Center’s (NCDC) into a color-coded reflection of record high temperatures in the lower 48 from 1895 to 2012.

Underground (weather) historian Christopher Burton numerically quantifies the colors on the map in the chart below:

Chart credit NCDC

The chart represents the total number of NCDC sites that recorded daily and/or monthly record high and low temperatures last year.

The first four columns measure daily and monthly record highs and lows rather than all-time highs and lows.

The fifth and sixth columns indicate the number of recorded all-time highs and lows.

“You look out the window and you see climate change in action,” says Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.  “This is the way it gets manifested.”

Peter Sinclair, documentarian, describes 2012 as the “year climate change got real” for Americans and others on the planet.

Source:   ThinkProgress, January 5 and 8, 2013

#CLIMATE CHANGE: #REINDEER DECLINING–CANADIAN INDIGENOUS TRIBES MAY DISAPPEAR

Reindeer pawing fluffy snow                                                                      To get at tasty plants below

Jeff Flokin of the International Fund for Wildlife is concerned about the severe, worldwide decline in reindeer (caribou) herds, a 60% decline from their historic highs.   He focuses on the 84% decline in the Peary and Dolphin-Union herds on Victoria Island in Nunavut, Canada to explain the cause of the decline:

“It’s climate change.  The temperature, the weather and the landscape are all changing in the Arctic.  So, in particular with this species—they’re a browsing species—they need to have access to the different plants and native shrubs that grow in the Tundra where they are in the winter.

“Usually, in past times, there’s kind of a light, fluffy snow that falls in that region, but now, because of the temperature change, they tend to have heavy, icy rain.  It’s freezing over these plants so the reindeer can’t access them for food.

“What’s happening is they’re starving or spending too much energy trying to find food.  As a result–starvation, malnutrition, low-reproductive rates.  And that’s causing these die-offs.”

The situation is even more acute in the George River herd further east in Labrador, the northerly region of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.  The reindeer population of 900,000 has dwindled to fewer than 28,000.

George Rich is an elder of the Innu tribe of 850 indigenous people 150 miles north of Goosebay, Labrador.  He said that traditionally, caribou bear calves in June, a month when they rely on cold temperatures to keep away the Black Flies that plague them.  But climate change has created earlier thaws and earlier springs—and Black Fly infestations in June.

Rich adds that because of ground surfaces being exposed by the warming climate, a giant nickel find was discovered in 1993.  Helicopters employed to facilitate subsequent mineral exploration are also creating problems for the reindeer herds—they’re terrified of the copter noise and are being driven away from their normal migration path, the path that normally falls within Innu community.

“What’s happening right now,” says Rich, “one of the mineral exploration companies is trying to build a road right in the heart of our territory.  Right in the heart of calving grounds.”

So closely are all aspects of Innu life linked to the caribou that the disappearance of the herds may mean the disappearance of the Innu, whose legends teach that the animals are human.

Rich says his tribe has an ancient caribou ritual similar to the practice of Communion in churches:  After a successful hunt, “All the hunters will gather the caribou hind legs, clean the meat then pound the caribou bones to what we call the mukushan, a feast for all the people to attend.”  He compares “the kind of sacred thing we do with the caribou” to a Catholic priest giving holy bread to the people.

The health of the Innu is affected by the dwindling herds.  The indigenous people no longer follow the herds for weeks, getting “a lot of exercise.   We used to store maybe one or two caribou in the freezer.”

So what are they eating instead?

‘We are forced to eat the store-bought food.  We live in a very isolated community.  The only access to (Labrador) is by plane and by coastal freighter in the summertime.

“And when most of the frozen food comes in, it’s not a very good situation at all.  And then that’s created a lot of problems in diet and eating junk food, and that’s created . . . a diabetes epidemic.  Thirty percent of people in my communities have diabetes.  A lot more with kidney failures.”

And what does Rich see as the impact on the Innu if the herds do disappear?

“Without the caribou, I don’t think that the Innu will be able to survive as the Innu themselves because the caribou is our identify.  It’s our culture, it’s our way of life, it’s also a part of the big spiritual awareness of what’s going on in the animal world.

“And without the caribou, we don’t think the Innu will be able to survive.”

My Take on the plight of the Innui:  It’s the same situation during which the US government encouraged the slaughter of the buffalo, the anchor of Plains Indians’ culture and religion.  As planned, the Plains Indians nearly disappeared with the buffalo, too.

Source:    Transcript of PRI’s Living on Earth, December 7, 2012

#CLIMATE CHANGE: 2012 HOTTEST, MOST EXTREME YEAR IN U.S. HISTORY

Hot enough for you?  Image courtesy of National Climatic Data Center

Jeffrey Masters, Director of Meteorology at Weather Underground, Inc, (Wunderground) predicts that a warm November and record-breaking heat in early December means 2012 will be the warmest since record keeping began in 1895 for the 48 contiguous states.

Additionally, eight of the months racked up their warmest temperatures ever.

During the 11-month period charted above, 18 states were record warm, and twenty-four states were top ten warm.

Wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher Burt reported that our early-December heat wave this week set records for the warmest December temperature on record in seven states.  December is well on its way to being in the top-20% warmest Decembers on record.

Masters’s summary of the year:  “A record 86% of the contiguous US had maximum temperatures that were in the warmest 10% historically during the first eleven months of 2012, and 71% of the US had warm minimum temperatures in the top 10%–2^nd highest on record.

“The percentage area of the US experiencing top-10% drought conditions was up 32 %, which was the 4^th greatest since 1910.

“Only droughts in the Dust Bowl year of 1934, and during 1954 an 1956, were more extreme for the January-November period.

“Heavy 1-day downpours have been below average so far in 2012, though, with 9% of the nation experiencing a top-10% extreme, compared to the average of 10%.”

Source:   ThinkProgress, December 9, 2012

OBAMA SCIENCE vs. ROMNEY SCIENCE

Referring to the candidates’ comments regarding science, Nature news reports, “ . . . their sharply contrasting visions of the size and proper role of government have profound implications for science. “

In the face of competition from other countries in the world market, Obama said, “We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got the best science and research in the world.”

Romney said, “Government does not create jobs.”

What follows are direct quotes from the candidates and from Nature.

CLIMATE

Obama:  Climate change is one of the biggest issues . . . we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits.

Romney:  I oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system . . . .   Economic growth and technological innovation, not economy-suppressing regulation, is the key to environmental protection.

Nature:  Romney opposes all climate regulations.  Obama used regulatory powers to push through energy and climate regulations, and subsidies for low-carbon technology.

EDUCATION

Obama:  Now I want to hire another hundred thousand new math and science teachers and create two million more slots in our community colleges so that people can get trained for the jobs that are out there right now.

Romney:  I propose we grade our schools so parents . . . can take their child to a school that’s being more successful.  I don’t want to cut our commitment to education, I want to make it more effective and efficient.

Nature:  Obama often emphasizes science education.  Romney focuses on streamlining the federal role in education while encouraging school choice and voucher programs.

ENERGY

Obama:  I have supported an all-of-the-above energy approach that will allow us to take control of our energy future, one where we safely and responsibly develop America’s many energy resources.

Romney:  A crucial component of my plan . . . is to dramatically increase domestic energy production and partner closely with Canada and Mexico to achieve North American energy independence by 2020.

Nature:  Romney and Obama have tussled over who supports fossil fuels the most.  The difference is that Obama continues to push to develop renewable sources for the long term.

REGULATION

Obama:  Smart rules can save lives and keep us safe, but there are some regulations that don’t make sense and cost too much.

Romney:  We must reduce the power of unaccountable regulators by requiring that all major regulations receive congressional approval and by imposing a regulatory cap that prevents the addition of new regulatory costs.

Nature:  Romney would slow or stop regulation where possible.  Obama moved to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens, but also used regulatory powers to further his agenda.

STEM CELLS

Obama:  We will vigorously support scientists who pursue this research.  And we will aim for America to lead the world in the discoveries it one day may yield.

Romney:  I have a deep concern about curing disease . . . but I will not create new embryos through cloning or through embryo farming, because that would be creating life for the purpose of destroying it.”

Obama repealed limits on federal funding of stem-cell research.  Romney has not specified his stance, but his religious views may stand in opposition to current policy.

Sources:   SmartPlanet Daily, October  24, 2012      Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, October 24, 2012

CLIMATE CHANGE: VOLCANOES CAUSED & SUSTAINED THE LITTLE ICE AGE, 1250-1850 CE

Kurt Refsnider (left) and Gifford Miller (right), U of CO Boulder researchers, hunting for tundra plants exposed on the margin of a retreating ice cap on Baffin Island in Arctic Canada.

In 1783, Benjamin Franklin wrote a paper blaming an extremely cool summer on volcanic dust from the eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano.  Furthermore, Franklin blamed the huge amounts of erupted sulfur dioxide for the death of much of Iceland’s livestock and for the famine that wiped out a quarter of the island’s human population.

What the statesman was referring to is known as a volcanic winter.  After a large and particularly explosive type of volcanic eruption, volcanic ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and raise Earth’s ability to reflect solar radiation, resulting in a drop in global temperatures for a period of time.

The 1991 explosion of the stratovolcano Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines cooled global temperatures for 2-3 years by half a degree Celsius.

Though there’s considerable debate among climate scientists regarding the Little Ice Age, many are coming to accept the explanation that volcanic eruptions caused the Little Ice Age.  Disagreements continue, though, as to when the period began and what prolonged it.

Researchers from the University of Colorado may have a good start on unraveling the riddles.  Gifford Miller and Kurt Refsnider subjected dead vegetation they’d collected in the Canadian Arctic to radiocarbon dating.  Most of the dates at which the vegetation died from the encroachment of snow and ice clustered at two periods of time:  1275 and 1450 CE.

Miller and his colleagues pointed to a likely cause of the sudden cooling:  a period of at least four major volcanic eruptions starting in 1275 and continuing through the 1800s.

David Schneider, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, expressed a remaining unanswered question in the minds of researchers:  “Volcanism explains the abruptness (of the Little Ice Age), but it can’t account for the longevity (of the age).  This has always been the problem with the volcanic explanation. . . .  Volcanoes can make it cold, but they can’t keep it cold.”

Miller and his team used computer modeling to determine how repeated, short-lived episodes of volcanism could trigger centuries-long cold periods.  Their modeling suggested that the persistent cold summers after the eruptions could be explained by a sea ice-ocean feedback originating in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Prolonged cooling from repeated eruptions would have caused Arctic sea ice to expand to the south until it reached warmer temperatures and melted.  Because sea ice contains almost no salt, when it melted it created a less-dense freshwater cap over the seawater.  The cap acted as an insulator, weakening heat transfer from the tropics to the North Atlantic and, in effect, creating a self-sustaining feedback system that could last long after the effects of the volcanic aerosols subsided, Miller says.

Schneider admits that such a scenario is plausible.  “This study is really the first to explain how a short-lived event like a volcanic eruption can trigger cooling that lasts for centuries.”

However, he still has questions.  “Before the modern era, there are only a few lines of evidence to figure out when and where volcanic eruptions occurred.”  Dating of ash in ice core records suggests an eruption on the island of Vanuatu in 1450.   But records of a 1275 eruption are ambiguous.

from  Wikipedia, “Volcanic Winter”    EARTH, The Science behind the Headlines, May 8, 2012—study published in Geophysical Research Letters    

CLIMATE CHANGE: EXTENT & IMPACT OF THE LITTLE ICE AGE, 1250-1850 CE

NOTE:  The dates I’m using regarding the Little Ice Age (LIA) in this series are approximate.  However, all are CE.

Researchers’ conclusions regarding what happened when and where differ.  Only last year was definitive proof available that the Little Ice Age had extended as far south as the Patagonian region of Chile.

Jorge Montt Glacier, Southern Patagonian ice field.

A team of scientists studied tree rings from old trees recently exposed by the retreat of the Patagonian glaciers and radiocarbon dated sample from the trees.   The dating showed the trees had been iced-over between the mid 1500s and mid 1700s as part of the Little Ice Age glaciation.

The Earth is currently in an interglacial period, meaning that the last significant glacier scraped its way down from the North Pole about 14,000 years ago and receded about 10,000 years ago.  In northeastern Ohio, it traveled as far south as the Canton area, where warmer temperatures caused it to melt and begin its retreat.

 The Little Ice Age

At some point during the Middle Ages, glaciers began expanding and creeping southward. Radiocarbon dating of dead plants established glacial advances as early as 1275 CE.

Summers became wet and cold, causing the African Niger River to flood.  Winters brought unprecedented depths of snow, even in Africa and South America.

In Europe and the Americas, torrential rainfall and cooler temperatures destroyed crops.  In 1315, famine spread in Europe, causing horrific deaths, diseases and cannibalism.  Additionally, the sparsity of plants drove animals to forage closer to humans, bringing their plague-infested fleas right into centers of population.  The Black Death spread from Asia to the Middle East to Europe and to Africa, wiping out half of Europe’s population and significant numbers of other populations.

Famine and plagues led to social unrest across the globe, weakening the Mongol hold over China and thus enabling the Chinese to overthrow the Mongol Dynasty.

In Europe, the nobility fought desperately to extinguish the Peasant Revolt.  Though the revolt failed, so many of the peasant class had died from famine and plague that the nobility were forced to work their own land with their own hands, thus weakening the feudal system.

Thames Frost Fair, 1683-84, Thomas Wyke

Londoners, though, found a way to make merry during the winter of 1683-84, a time known as “the great frost.”  The Thames River froze solid and became the occasion for a Frost Fair.  The ice activities, described by John Evelyn included “ . . . sleds, sliding with skeetes, a bull baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cooks, tippling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water.”

Evelyn duly noted the downside of “the great frost:”  ”The fowls, fish and birds, and all our exotic plants and greens universally perishing.  Many parks of deer were destroyed, and all sorts of fuel so dear that there were great contributions to keep the poor alive.  London, by reason for the excessive coldness of the air hindering the ascent of the smoke, was so filled with fuliginous steam of the sea-coal . . . that one could hardly breath.”

During the time of “the great frost” on North American shores, the ice on Lake Superior didn’t melt until June.  In 1780, New York Harbor froze, letting people walk from Manhattan to Staten Island.

The Caldera of Mt Tambora, island of Sumbawa, Indonesia

In 1815, Mt. Tambora erupted, further cooling the planet.  In 1816, “The Year without a Summer,” Quebec had a foot of snow in June.

Postcard of Thames River, Norwich, CT, frozen in 1906

As this postcard shows, incidents in the early 20^th Century bore witness to the lingering effects of the Little Ice Age.

from Wikipedia “Frost Fairs,”       Examiner.com, May 8, 2012       No TricksZone, October 16, 2011—study published in climate of the Past        EARTH, The Science behind the headlines, May 8, 2012—study published in Geophysical Research Letters    

Coming up:  Causes of the prolonged Little Ice Age.

 

 

 

 

 

 

UC BERKELEY: CLIMATE CHANGE INCREASES RISKS OF WILDFIRES IN U.S. WEST AND EUROPE

The 2007 Zaca fire, California’s second largest wildfire that scorched just under 250,000 acres

The consensus of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with an international team of scientists, is that climate change will cause a global disruption of wildfire patterns over the next 30 years.  Their study used 16 different climate change models and generated what researchers described as one of the most comprehensive studies of the impact of climate change on global fire patterns

The current trend toward higher temperatures and less precipitation in the western states of the US and in most of Europe leads to increasingly abundant dry vegetation to fuel wildfires.  Conversely, wildfire activity will decrease in equatorial areas, such as the rainforests, because of increased rainfall in those regions.

Max Moritz is the lead author of the study and a fire specialist in UC Cooperative Extension and is based at the school’s College of Natural Resources.

He urges conservation and urban development experts to include fire in long-term planning and risk analysis because “In the long run, we found what most fear—increasing fire activity across large parts of the planet.  But the speed and extent to which some of these changes may happen is surprising.  These abrupt changes in fire patterns not only affect people’s livelihoods, but they add stress to native plants and animals that are already struggling to adapt to habitat loss.”

UC Berkeley researchers worked with study co-author Katharine Hayhoe, associate professor, atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University.  The collaboration combined more than a decade of satellite-based fire records with historical climate observations and model simulations of future change.

“Most of the previous wildfire projection studies focused on specific regions of the world, or relied upon only a handful of climate models,” said Hayhoe.  “Our study is unique in that we build a forecast for fire based upon consistent projections across 16 different climate models combined with satellite data, which gives a global perspective on recent fire patterns and their relationship to climate.”

The study found the greatest disagreements among models covering the next few decades, with uncertainty across more than half the planet about whether fire activity is likely to increase or decrease.

But the models show a high agreement in climate models both near- and long-term for areas like the western US, resulting in the conclusion that the areas should prepare for more fire in the future.

“When many different models paint the same picture, that gives us confidence that the results of our study reflect a robust fire frequency projection for that region,” Hayhoe said.  “What is clear is that the choices we are making as a society right now and in the next few decades will determine what Earth’s climate will look like over this century and beyond.”

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the US Forest Service, the National Science Foundation and The Nature Conservancy helped support this study.

U   from UC Berkeley News Center, June 12, 2012   study published in Ecosphere, June 12, 2012