On Oct 24, 11:00 am, Tunderbar wrote:
On Oct 22, 3:36 am, Roger Coppock wrote:





Expert: Warming Climate Fuels Mega-Fires
Scott Pelley Reports From The American West's Fire Lines On The
Rising
Number Of Mega-Fires
Oct 21, 2007 CBS News

(CBS) Every year you can count on forest fires in the West like
hurricanes in the East, but recently there has been an enormous change
in Western fires. In truth, we've never seen anything like them in
recorded history. It appears we're living in a new age of mega-fires
-- forest infernos ten times bigger than the fires we're used to
seeing.

To find out why it's happening, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley
went out on the fire line to see the burning of the American West.

Last fire season was the worst in recorded history. This year is
already a close second, with two months to go. More than eight million
acres have burned this year already. The men and women facing the
flames are elite federal firefighters called "Hotshots."

Nationwide there are 92 hotshot crews of 20 members each. 60 Minutes
found a group of New Mexico hotshots in the Salmon River Mountains of
Idaho. They had set up camp in a burned out patch of forest with fire
raging all around. They were hitting the day, exhausted, halfway
through a 14-day shift.

Leaving camp to scout out the situation, the firefighters anticipated
a mess and they found it: the valley was engulfed in smoke. The flames
blew through the firebreak lines they dug the day before.

"We were trying to turn the corner yesterday, and that's when it kind
of blew out. I think we got more ground over here that's been taken.
Any questions?" a firefighter said.

No question, this day the fire won. It surged across the mountain,
forcing the hotshots to evacuate. All across the West, crews are
playing defense, often pulling back to let acres burn, but standing
firm to save communities. One stand this season came in August at
Ketchum, Idaho. Forecasters said it was 99 percent certain Ketchum
would be lost if nothing was done. Some 1,700 local, state, and
federal firefighters came from across the nation, working around the
clock from a mountainside camp.

Residents were evacuated, as 300-foot flames headed for homes.

60 Minutes joined up with Tom Boatner, who after 30 years on the fire
line, is now the chief of fire operations for the federal government.

"A fire of this size and this intensity in this country would have
been extremely rare 15, 20 years they're commonplace these days,"
Boatner says.

"Ten years ago, if you had a 100,000 acre fire, you were talking about
a huge fire. And if we had one or two of those a year, that was
probably unusual. Now we talk about 200,000 acre fires like it's just
another day at the office. It's been a huge change," he says.

Asked what the biggest fires now are, Boatner says, "We've had, I
believe, two fires this summer that have been over 500,000 acres, half
a million acres, and one of those was over 600,000 acres."

"You wouldn't have expected to see this how recently?" Pelley asks.

"We got records going back to 1960 of the acres burned in America. So,
that's 47 fire seasons. Seven of the 10 busiest fire seasons have been
since 1999," Boatner says.

[ . . . ]

The rest of the transcript of this very good CBS 60-minute segment is
at:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n3380176.shtml

That is a beautiful allegation - that agw is causing the fires.
Wonderfully absurd and it has an exquisite tinge of desperation.

The sillier the alarms the quicker we put this baby to bed.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You should see the link below

You might want to look at the two links below, #1 shows the drought
status for the u.s as of September 2007, than you might want to
correlate that to the map #2 of the "observed experimental fire
potential" which shows great overlapping areas, as the fire potential
is partly based on the fuel amounts which is effected by rain totals,
then correlate that to the study #3 showing that global climate change
is likely to increase the likelihood of drought conditions in the
west, were the fires are occurring currently. So it goes something
like this one of the effects of global climate change is increasing
the likelihood of drought in areas such as the southwest which then
increases the likelihood of greater amounts of fuels for the fire in
the region, which then increases the likelihood that when seasonal
conditions are right a major fire can result, as seen in southern
California right now...

#1
U.S. Drought monitor
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate...p/drmon-pg.gif

#2
Observed experimental fire potential
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate.../exp-fp-pg.gif
The experimental fire potential index map uses satellite derived
Relative Greenness, an NFDR fuel model map (both 1 km resolution), and
an interpolated 10-hour timelag map as inputs to weight the relative
influence of live and dead vegetation to fire potential. The scale
ranges from 0 (low) to 100 (high). Except for 10-h moisture content,
the calculations used in the National Fire Danger Rating System are
not part of the Fire Potential Index.

#3
Here is a link to a study done in 2000 on the impact of climate change
for the western u.s.
http://www.economics.noaa.gov/librar...s_for_west.doc
DROUGHT AND CLIMATE CHANGE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WEST
By
Richard M. Adams
Dannele E. Peck
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
December, 2002
"Introduction
The prolonged drought over large portions of the West generated a set
of adverse and costly effects in 2002, ranging from record wildfires
in Oregon, to large fish kills in California's Klamath River triggered
by warm water temperatures. In some regions of the West, drought has
persisted for nearly a decade, leading to severe stress on vegetation
and water resources. The intensity and frequency of recent droughts
has raised concerns that fundamental climate shifts may be occurring
in the western U.S. and elsewhere, due perhaps to the generally rising
temperatures observed globally over the past decade. This paper
reviews the current understanding of possible links between drought
and global climate change, the physical and economic consequences of
drought, and the potential to mitigate the adverse consequences of
such climatic events using long term climate forecasts and other
meteorological information.
Summary
Global climate change is likely to increase the frequency and
intensity of drought for many regions of the western United States.
Although subject to substantial uncertainly, regional forecasts of
long term climatic change from GCM's do offer a glimpse into possible
future drought conditions. Predicted impacts vary by region, but
include increased temperatures and evaporation rates; increased, but
more variable precipitation; higher proportions of winter
precipitation arriving as rain, not snow; earlier and more severe
summer drought, and decreased water quality.
Drought currently results in substantial economic losses in the United
States annually. These losses occur across a range of sectors, from
agriculture to energy to recreation, and have profound effects on
local communities. Increases in drought imply increased costs to
society, unless agricultural producers, water users and others are
able to adapt to these changes in seasonal weather patterns (as
forecast by some GCM analysts). Improved forecasts concerning
future drought conditions, particularly at the regional scale, are
thus necessary for managers and policy makers to identify efficient
adaptive strategies, and reduce the economic costs of drought."