The Colorado Wildfires: How Climate Change is Changing Wildfires
Recent wildfires in the west are just another example of how wildfire seasons are not only increasing, but also becoming more common all over the country. As weather conditions continue to change due to the global climate crisis, more extreme events such as drought and heat waves cause new areas to become susceptible to the possibility of wildfires.
2020 Colorado Wildfire. Photo by Malachi Brooks, via Unsplash. In 2022, as of early February, there have already been 2,388 fires that have burned a total of 40,822 acres across the U.S., surpassing a 10-year average of 1,924 fires and 38,501 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. In 2021, the state of California faced unprecedented fires that raged throughout the year, burning a total of 2.5 million acres and changing officials’ definition of the “fire season” to a “fire year.” One of the most recent catastrophic wildfires occured on December 30th of last year, when a suburban neighborhood...