Wildfires are burning everywhere it seems right now--especially everywhere west of the Rockies. At least that's how it feels when you go to the U.S. Wildfire Map or the Global Forest Watch Map. Glowing orange skies in California and reports for friends in Colorado and Oregon are not comforting. I'd imagine their air quality isn't comforting to them either! As if we don't have enough reasons to wear masks with Covid 19!
The wildfires in the West Coast with overly-dry land is about as comforting as hitting the peak of hurricane season on September 10th when there were there were 7 active systems in the Atlantic Ocean. Only 2 were named at the time, though the other 5 had potential of moving beyond "tropical disturbances." Thus far for the 2020 Hurricane system, at this writing we had hit 17 named storms. Annual average is 11-12 storms. There's even a potential (if we keep going this year) of hitting Hurricane or Tropical Storm Vicky (yours truly, though spelled differently). Of course, if we judge 2020 by memes, we're of course destined to get lucky and land there! There's some other speculation that we will use up the 21 storm-slated names, causing us to have to use the Greek alphabet. The only other time we had to do that was in 2005.
Hurricanes & wildfires are two of the major effects of climate change and warming global temperatures.
For fires, the problem is visible in this visual (from the Union of Concerned Scientist "Infographic: Wilfires & Climate Change: Visualizing the Connection in 5 Sets of Photos & Charts"):
- rising ocean temperatures
- rising sea levels
- increased melting of ice-coverage over land
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