WHY DOES CALIFORNIA HAVE SO MANY WILDFIRES?

Pourquoi la Californie brûle-t-elle autant ? (wildfire feu de forêt)

Les incendies font parti intégrante de l'écosystème ouest américain – ils ont, comme d'autres phénomènes naturels, leur « saison ». Mais les années 2010 ont vu s’accroître considérablement le nombre d'hectares brûlés chaque année. Quelles sont les raisons de ce phénomène et pourquoi 2020 est-elle considérée comme une année particulièrement destructrice ?

Fires have spread all across the West Coast during California's fire season. High temperatures and strong winds have made the situation even worse. What is it about California that makes wildfires so catastrophic? There are four key ingredients.

THE (CHANGING) CLIMATE

2. “Fire, in some ways, is a very simple thing,” said Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “As long as stuff is dry enough and there’s a spark, then that stuff will burn.”

3. But while California’s climate has always been fire-prone, the link between climate change and bigger fires is inextricable. “Behind the scenes of all of this, you’ve got temperatures that are about 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than they would’ve been without global warming,” Williams said. That dries out vegetation even more, making it more likely to burn.

4. California’s fire record dates back to 1932; the 10 largest fires since then have occurred since 2000, including the 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest in state history, and this year’s LNU Lightning Complex, which is burning west of Sacramento.

5. “In pretty much every single way, a perfect recipe for fire is just kind of written in California,” Williams said. “But then climate change, in a few different ways, seems to also load the dice toward more fire in the future.”

PEOPLE

6. Even if the conditions are right for a wildfire, you still need something or someone to ignite it. Sometimes the trigger is nature, like a lightning strike, but more often than not humans are responsible.

7. “Many of these large fires that you’re seeing in Southern California and impacting the areas where people are living are human-caused,” said Nina Oakley, an assistant research professor at the

(SIPA) Firefighters attempting to control the spread of a forest fire in California, September 2020. The West Coast faces increasingly destructive fires.