El Nino Teeing Up A Major Fire Year; Drought Already Hit SE Asia; Globally, Alaska-Sized Area Has Already Burned

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Theodore Keeping, a wildfire researcher at the University of Reading in England, said firefighters in those regions are bracing for a severe year, potentially facing some of the most damaging fire conditions seen in recent history. He noted that the combination of El Niño on top of ongoing warming has driven a “whiplash” between extreme moisture and extreme drought in some regions. Grasses and brush thrive during heavy rains, then dry out quickly when the heat returns, turning into combustible fuel.

This year, Keeping said, wildfires on several continents have already scorched an Alaska-sized area of land—more than half a million square miles—50 percent more than average over the past 25 years. Almost all countries in West Africa and the Sahel region of North-Central Africa experienced record-breaking wildfires, he added.

But wildfire season is only beginning in many parts of the world, so with “this rapid start, in combination with the forecast El Niño … we’re looking at a particularly severe year materializing,” he said. Big fires that burned in “normally lusher regions” of East Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, were associated with severe droughts that were, in turn, linked with human-caused climate change, he said. Scientists know that ecosystems are drying more rapidly during periods of low rainfall due to warming, he said, adding that “these fires are of particular concern, given how populated the region is”

Keeping said that a strong El Niño “can have a major effect on wildfire risk” appearing later this year, which could increase the likelihood of severe hot and dry conditions in Australia, as well as the northwestern U.S. and Canada, and the Amazon rainforest.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12052026/el-nino-climate-extremes-heatwaves-wildfires-floods/

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