In contrast to the warnings by certain media outlets and others, this has been a very benign wildfire year for Washington State.
Less fires than normal, less area burned than normal, and far less forest area burned than normal.
For these DNR lands, this year has fewest number of wildfires over the past ten years (see below), well below normal (red dotted line).
Most of the wildfires are very small, many being debris/garbage burns gone out of control. More important is the area burned, whose statistics are shown below. Only a small area burned this year...about half of normal (red line).
What is particularly striking this year is how little forest area has burned in Washington, with most of the burned area being grass or rangeland (or places where rangeland interfaced with low-density forest).
To illustrate this, below is a map of the burned area this year so far. The biggest fire was a range fire near the Columbia Gorge. Most of the others were primarily in range/grass, with minor tree components.
It is of interest to compare this year's fire areas against the fire areas for the past decade below). Grassland/range areas dominated but there were certainly some significant forested areas that have burned.
Air quality was generally decent over western Washington this summer, with most the smoke remaining aloft when it did enter the region. Below is the small particle concentrations (PM2.5) at several locations around Puget Sound. A few minor events. The worst air quality was associated with July 4th!
Finally, I may be sounding like a broken record, but the hype of this wildfire season for our state, pushed by local entities such as the Seattle Times, was not responsible. The ST "Climate Lab" is infamous for this kind of "journalism".
The truth is that nearly all the fires are caused by human ignition.
The truth is that most of the fire areas have been characterized by grass and range vegetation, or places where such light fuels impinge on areas with trees. Fires in light fuels have little to do with climate change, since they can dry out within hours.
The truth is that there has been massive increases in human settlement in fire-prone areas.
While I agree that the wildfire season "hype" was out of hand, do you think emphasizing high fire risk during particular events is overblown, too, even when it doesn't result in large fires? Obviously, much of our fire risk (especially in western WA) comes from specific wind events, and we fortunately did not see any really strong easterly flow events this summer. (To respond to my own question) I guess it depends more on the intent of the prediction: is it to inform the public in order to protect from dangerous fire risk, or is it feed into climate alarmism? I always struggle with this communication since bad forecasts (like this one) can appear "overblown" and don't do any favors for those seeking to inform the public about global warming and the nuance in the regional impacts from it.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the hype is connected with simplistic thinking. Its hot and dry, so we will have big fires. That neglects key issues such as wind (very important), ignition, and other factor
DeleteCliff, I'm inclined to believe that this will wind up being a good (low) year for wildfires in WA. But typically our wildfire season runs through September, and there are still several active fires burning in our state. So it is not valid to compare 2024 numbers, which remain incomplete, to the complete numbers in previous years, as you do in a couple of your graphs.
ReplyDeleteJerry...you are not considering the weather forecasts...the weather for the rest of the month will NOT be favorable for fires. The season is over now. Washington has few fires now and they are not expanding...and will soon be finished...cliff
DeleteCliff, I am sure the extended hot temps in August has a correlation with outdoor human activity. Since most humans cause fire and the hot keeps people inside, not as many fire starts happened during critical times? Be interesting to see. This year, though, I did not notice a lot of hot dry wind events. Just frontal passages where humidities came up quick and temps lowered quickly. Lots of potential was there as with every year, just cards aligned. Hence the same problem with scare tactics from government and media, they cannot predict it. Ofcourse, the cold springs fire happened Sept during a cool down
ReplyDeletewith a strong North wind event. Temps were not that hot but moisture was low and strong north wind.
Will fix when published but I meant prolonged heat of july
ReplyDeleteHere is an off-topic comment. Back on August 29th, I listed a series of actions incoming governor Bob Ferguson must take if he is to demonstrate his firm commitment to a Net Zero future for Washington State.
ReplyDeleteBetah Blocher, August 29, 2024 at 2:42 PM
In response to that August 29th comment, 'Budd' asked me if I was a political progressive. The answer is that I am not.
What I am is an energy policy wonk living in the Middle of Nowhere, Eastern Washington State, with thirty-five years experience in nuclear construction and operations. My avocation is to explore the technical, economic, political, and societal implications of 21st Century energy policies.
And now for the topic of my off-topic comment:
The Boeing machinist's union is now on strike. Having been an employee of Boeing many moons ago, well before the merger with McDonnell-Douglas, I am sympathetic to the union demands. I was treated exceptionally well by the pre-merger incarnation of Boeing, but those who remained with Boeing after the M-D merger got shafted, big time.
One of the actions I listed in my August 29th comment, Number 3, is for incoming governor Bob Ferguson to issue an ultimatum to Boeing that unless that corporation commits to designing and manufacturing a hydrogen-fueled airliner by 2035, all tax and financial incentives for building jet airliners in Washington State will be withdrawn.
Jet airliners account for roughly 3% of carbon emissions worldwide. Roughly half of the world's airliners are Boeing jet airliners. As one item in its union contract negotiations, Boeing is offering a committment that the next new airliner Boeing designs will be built in the Puget Sound region.
Suppose Governor Ferguson demonstrates his firm committment to Net Zero by issuing an ultimatum that Boeing's next new airliner must be hydrogen-fueled. Would the machinist's union, an organization which strongly supports Bob Ferguson for governor, be willing to support such an ultimatum?
Currently very little hydrogen is produced using low-carbon energy sources. Wind and solar are a fraction of total grid output. Even if this source were not a fraction, and instead in quantity available to produce the vast amount of fuel needed for the aviation industry, wind and solar themselves are merely accessories to a fossil fuel infrastructure. Multi-ton steel towers are not manufactured in factories run by solar cells.
DeleteIf we could mandate all electric vehicles in say, Tahoe or Yosemite, we might actually reduce the pollution in those areas to have a positive local environmental impact. But there would be no reduction in pollution worldwide because the electricity generated for charging batteries may well be from coal and other fossil fuels, simply at a distant location.
Continue your research, reexamine your advocacy, and understand that your ultimatum is ill-advised.
Dale, the questions to be addressed here are larger than simply whether or not the technology of hydrogen-fueled aircraft is sufficiently practical, and whether or not the infrastructure needed to support the generation and storage of enough hydrogen to fuel those aircraft will be available after 2035.
DeleteCan Bob Ferguson and the machinist's union continue to demand that only electric vehicles be sold in Washington State after 2035, and that Washington State's citizens must greatly reduce their consumption of all forms of fossil energy -- while at the same time continuing to build jet airliners whose carbon emissions over their service lives will exceed any reductions in carbon emissions we in Washington State will ever manage to achieve?
Further, can Bob Ferguson and the machinist's union continue to support incoming president Kamala Harris' plan for Net Zero in the electricity sector by 2035 knowing that: (1) China's and India's carbon emissions will continue to increase through 2035 and beyond; (2) most of the renewable energy systems needed to transform the US power grid will be produced in China using massive quantities of fossil fueled energy, mostly coal; and (3) Washington State's citizens, and indeed all US citizens, must reduce their consumption of electricity to possibly two-thirds or even half of what it is today if the Kamala Harris plan to reach Net Zero in electricity by 2035 is to be achieved?
I disagree with your assessment that this was a "benign" fire season. Your fire statistics do not include federal land fires which if included would show a considerably larger amount of acres burned this year, but even if that amount was less than the recent 10-year average that you show, I think you would find that this seasons burned acres would be considerably larger than the long term average of acres burned if you include data in the years prior to 2014. These recent years, since 2014, have seen some large fire years so the recent 10-year average you use is much higher than in most 10-year or longer averages for seasons back before 2014 and into the 1900s. You called this season and last season "benign" fire seasons. I can point out many past years that were truly benign, when acres burned were far lower than this year and there were no project size fires at all. Eastern Washington did luck out this summer in not having the dry lightning outbreaks that started so many fires in Oregon, where the prediction of a bad fire season certainly verified. Heat and dryness were just as bad in Eastern Washington as in Oregon this summer and we could have had the same fire problems as they had. It was bad enough, with two or three fires of near 50,000 acres and the Pioneer fire which was not truly in control for over two months. This is not the definition of a "benign" fire season, at least compared to the ones in the more distant past.
ReplyDeleteFinally, our recent summers in the Pacific Northwest have been increasingly warm and dry and that has been reflected by increased wildfire activity throughout the Northwest including British Columbia. I don't think you can imply the increased fire activity in say Eastern Oregon or British Columbia, or even Eastern Washington, is due mainly to massive increases in human settlement.
wxman,...that answer would be the same if one used the Federal lands...can do another blog on that. And if you did a really long-period view (say 150 years), this would not be an exceptional year. Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a lot more of this region burned. The Oregon folks have a nice graph showing this that I have included in my blog several times. https://www.oregon.gov/odf/fire/documents/odf-century-fire-history-chart.pdf
DeletePS: As you know, over recent decades we have had flammable cheatgrass and other other non-native grasses invading the region and massive amounts of human ignition, including arson. This has really been a very begin forest fire season--a topic worthy of another blog.
DeleteCliff would you please compare the PNW (include OR and ID) in a yearly comparison as you've done for WA. I believe OR broke a record this year for it's fire season and ID had a lot of action as well. Also, did this summer have less lightning strikes? And are our quick responses with the additional airplanes and helicopters that we recently acquire in WA helping stop some of these fires from growing into larger burns?
ReplyDeleteNot Cliff, but living here in Puget Sound, we simply did not get as much fires started, I don't think statewide, though eastern Washington I think got some more than here in western Washington.
DeleteOregon got it worse as many were started by dry lightning in eastern Oregon, but some in the western side of the state. Don't know about Idaho.
Overall though, nothing like we've had in recent years, most especially 2020 and 2021, massive heatwaves notwithstanding.
Great job with your forecast for the fire season last spring Cliff! You called for a below average fire season and that's what happened.
ReplyDelete