Fire is an essential, natural process that has shaped the world’s landscapes for millions of years -- but extreme wildfires are becoming more frequent, severe, and extensive thanks to human-caused climate change. We've just updated this explainer on climate and fire. Check it out to learn more -- - ThreadSky

katharinehayhoe.com • 230 days ago

Fire is an essential, natural process that has shaped the world’s landscapes for millions of years -- but extreme wildfires are becoming more frequent, severe, and extensive thanks to human-caused climate change.

We've just updated this explainer on climate and fire. Check it out to learn more --

Comments

mleipe.bsky.social•47 days ago

@johnvaillant.bsky.social writes extensively about this in his highly-entertaining and eye-opening "Fire Weather". Highly recommended.

ricst.bsky.social•230 days ago

I live in the Lake Tahoe area. Our home insurance rates have gone through the roof because of fire risk - though there has been no serious wildfire at the Lake in decades

rapieress.bsky.social•230 days ago

Yet.

rapieress.bsky.social•230 days ago

Everyone should watch, “Bring Your Own Brigade” ♥️ https://www.cbsnews.com/video/bring-your-own-brigade/

whimberry.bsky.social•48 days ago

📌

flavienm.bsky.social•229 days ago

Thanks, do you have a good reference for the impact of CC on hurricanes in the Caribbean? Thinking of hurricane Beryl eccentric trajectory and unusual strength

katharinehayhoe.com•229 days ago

The trajectory is determined by the prevailing air masses during the hurricane, and I’m not aware of any study that has found a significant trend there, other than that hurricanes are traveling more slowly in general.

On the other impacts, though, I do have a Global Weirding episode …

katharinehayhoe.com•229 days ago

… and I have a thread with the original resources that I need to update and port over from X.

In the meantime, probably the latest national climate assessment is where I would point you to. https://nca2023.globalchange.gov

flavienm.bsky.social•229 days ago

Thanks a million!

catinsight.bsky.social•229 days ago

This would be my one request: more work on hurricane tracks in a warming environment. Are more 2010s likely or more 2020s when it comes to future hurricane risk? I'm sure the insurance industry would gladly collaborate with academia on this!

sarava.net•228 days ago

As the Sobel etal PNAS 2023 paper showed, models struggle to simulate known *past* SST trends that affect hurricane tracks. You are asking models to simulate the unknown *future* hurricane tracks. We are working on it, but it won't happen anytime soon (assuming it's even possible to do it precisely)

catinsight.bsky.social•227 days ago

This is partly what I've been trying to feed back to our industry who've been using future model output that probably fraught with ENSO frequency problems amongst other things.

catinsight.bsky.social•228 days ago

Even more simple than that - do we feel a warming sea will change the landfall percentage. If seen some claims that it drops but from ensemble climate model data I've looked at, there's little evidence for it.

sarava.net•227 days ago

Doesn't risk assessment require considering all factors that affect landfall percentage? Warming sea is just one factor. Changes in atmospheric flow (shear, humidity, ...) could be just as important. The *hope* is that future hi-res (km-scale) global climate models may capture these factors better.

katharinehayhoe.com•228 days ago

I don’t think you understood my point. There are certainly studies on tendencies, but we can’t predict years, months or even weeks in advance the path a given hurricane will take as it depends on the weather conditions that week. Daily weather is chaotic and inherently unpredictable past >2 weeks.

kellyhereid.bsky.social•228 days ago

I think you and Richard are talking about two different things. I believe he is referencing researching how certain flavors of tracks may become more or less likely with climate change - like high activity/low landfall proportion as in 2010/11, or clustered tracks as in 2020.

kellyhereid.bsky.social•228 days ago

Aside from slowing forward motion as you mention, the "US wind shear barrier" papers come to mind. But these within-basin patterns are challenging to study and comparatively less work has been done there.

onedishwasher.bsky.social•228 days ago

I'm not a tropical meteorology specialist, but it's my understanding that our modeling of hurricane tracks has improved by leaps and bounds in the last 5 years. The key breakthrough was better understanding of the thermodynamics of the very top of the hurricane.

catinsight.bsky.social•228 days ago

I'm more interested not in the single events but how a season unfolds. Does global warming cause more or less % of storms that go on to landfall?

onedishwasher.bsky.social•227 days ago

that's going to be incredibly hard to pull apart from a statistical perspective. And, assuming a signal exists, Emanuel et al 2008 and Crompton et al 2011 estimated that it would take over 100 years for the "global warning" signal to be detectable over the normal "el nino" impacts etc.

kirstyc.bsky.social•48 days ago

📌

direnekoloji.bsky.social•47 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/direnekoloji.bsky.social/post/3lfhzoyis5s22

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