BOISE, Idaho:

A new study of Western forest fires confirms what is already apparent — wildfire seasons are getting longer and more destructive.

But researchers with the University of Idaho and Columbia University also say humans are to blame.

The study made public Monday says human-caused global warming contributed an additional 16,000 square miles of burned forests from 1984 to 2015.

Researchers say the 16,000 square miles represent half of the forest areas that burned over the last three decades.

“We’re no longer waiting for human-caused climate change to leave its fingerprint on wildfire across the western US,” John Abatzoglou, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of geography at the University of Idaho, said in a statement. “It’s already here.”

The authors of the study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say it’s the first to try to quantify how much humancaused climate change has increased wildfires in Western forests. Some other factors that had to be considered as contributing to the increase, the report said, included a legacy of fire suppression in the West, natural climate variability, and human settlement.