Climate alarmists claim that an increase in man-made greenhouse gas emissions will cause more fires.
For example…
Human-induced climate change promotes the conditions on which wildfires depend, increasing their likelihood … —ScienceDaily
Funk … says there is very well documented scientific evidence that climate change has been increasing the length of the fire season, the size of the area burned each year, and the number of wildfires. —DW
The clearest connection between global warming and worsening wildfires occurs through increasing evapotranspiration and the vapor-pressure deficit. In simple terms, vegetation and soil dry out, creating more fuel for fires to expand further and faster.
… Global warming will keep worsening wildfires … —SkepticalScience
Sounds serious. Is it true?
We show that fire weather seasons have lengthened across 29.6 million km2 (25.3%) of the Earth’s vegetated surface, resulting in an 18.7% increase in global mean fire weather season length. We also show a doubling (108.1% increase) of global burnable area affected by long fire weather seasons and an increased global frequency of long fire weather seasons across 62.4 million km2 (53.4%) during the second half of the study period. —Nature: Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013
This is about the most scientific paper I could find on the issue. Why are they obsessed with the length of the fire season? Why can’t they just answer the simple question: Is there more or less fire? [emphasis, links added]
NASA has collected daily data on Active Fires since 2000.
Now it all makes sense. Climate scammers need to cherrypick locations and seasons in order to distract from the empirical truth that global fires have been decreasing. Disgusting.
h/t Andrew R.
Read part 2 of Phin’s analysis of global fires here.
Read rest at Zoe’s Insights
Active fires and acres burned are different statistics.
It’s possible to have fewer fires but more acres burned.
Wildfire data are spurious, irrelevant data for climate science.
90% of fires are claimed to be man made.
A few tenths of a degree of global warming would not change human behavior so there were more accidental (and arson) fires, There could be a relationship between fires and precipitation. Consensus science claims a small increase of precipitation since 1900.
Too small to affect wildfires over a few decades. If there is a dry “fire” season, such as in California, it has not changed much over the past 50 years.
Climate alarmists will say anything to create fear.
They could not care less if government data contradict what they say.
Zoe pointed that out with the active fires chart last year.
The acres burned chart she presented this year is not very useful.