California sees more wildfires than any other state in the U.S., and the numbers are only increasing. Here are California wildfire facts and statistics for 2024.
Wildfire return intervals are expected to decrease in shrubland communities across southern California due to increasing anthropogenic fire ignitions and climate change. These shortened fire intervals may initiate a positive feedback, placing native chaparral species at risk of replacement by alien annual ...
Construction and assessment of a fire risk index system for typical grasslands in Xinjiang, China Liangliang Zhang Renping Zhang Yuhao Miao Fire Ecology (2024) Effects of recent wildfires on giant sequoia groves were anomalous at millennial timescales: a response to Hanson et al. Nathan L. ...
Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. In the last five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in its history. E...
This is because a significant portion of smoke exposure in Colorado is due to long range transport from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and Canada (Abdo et al., 2019) whereas the vast majority of smoke exposure in California is from active wildfires nearby. Moreover, health effects ...
Seasonal changes of the future large wildfires Fig. 3: Seasonal variations in the earth system model (ESM) ensemble-mean large fire probability (LFP). Monthly LFPs for the end of the 20th century (grey, 1970–1999), and the middle (light blue and light tan, 2040–2069) and end (blue ...
2021), both of which can reduce the risk of high-intensity wildfires (Wu et al. 2023). The State of California recently recognized TEK practices, including fire, as an area of study and potential collaboration to help meet the State’s goals in moderating the effects of forecast climate ...
Recorded area burned in wildfire events by year in California. (Source: CalFire, 2022) Full size image Prior research has investigated the effects of recent wildfires on air quality and public health through two primary methodologies. One approach involves employing wildfire emissions and chemical tra...
“Although prescribed fires come with their own risks, we know that prescribed fires can be better controlled over smaller pieces of land, achieving more efficient combustion that generates less pollution over the course of a few hours or days. In contrast, wildfires are u...
California is already experiencing significant economic and health damages from the effects of climate change, including an increase in intensity and incidents of wildfires6,7 and deteriorating air quality8,9. Concerns over the damages brought by air quality and climate change are further exacerbated ...