Carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement production are making western forests drier and more susceptible to wildfire, researchers say.
Almost 40% of forest area burned by wildfire in the western United States and southwestern Canada in the last 40 years can be attributed to carbon emissions associated with the world’s 88 largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers, according to new research that seeks to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their role in climate change.
To quantify the impact of the fossil fuel industry on wildfires, Dahl and her colleagues built on previous research that has shown that carbon emissions traced to the top 88 fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers — including Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and Shell — have contributed significantly to the average temperature by which the Earth has warmed.
The results don’t account for the effects of non-climate factors, including fire suppression, the prohibition of Indigenous burning and increases in human-sparked fires associated with more people moving into wilderness areas, which have played a role in driving the size and severity of individual fires, but have not affected the relationship between climate and burned area, the study notes.
Up until relatively recently, the public posture of the climate science community was that no individual extreme event could be attributed to global warming, said Noah Diffenbaugh, climate scientist at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability, who was not involved in the study. That changed in the early 2000s, and extreme event attribution has since become a robust sub-field of climate science, he said.
Last month, in what was seen as a major victory for plaintiffs, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from oil and gas companies that were seeking to have lawsuits over climate change filed by state and local governments moved to federal courts. The decision cleared a path for dozens of similar lawsuits to be heard in state courts, where communities that are suing are believed to have better chances of winning sizable damages.
“This paper really takes to the next level that linking of these increases in wildfires to the main emitters in the world,” Fu said.Flying over the Sierra Nevada, teams are using lasers to measure California’s vast snowpack, tracking flood risks as the snow melts.
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