Severe wildfires burning 8 times more area in western U.S., study finds

14 min readDec 3, 2020

As we move into winter and what is typically the wet season for the western U.S., the 2020 fire season is finally winding down. But the damage is done: nearly 14 million acres have burned across the nation, about double the 10-year average and the most acres burned since reliable record-keeping began in 1983.

Five of the six largest fires in California history and three of the four largest in Colorado history all burned this year. This dramatic increase in the acres burned by immense wildfires is being driven by fires which are burning hotter and more intensely than they used to.

In fact, according to a new study, there’s been an eight-fold increase since the mid-1980s in annual area burned by high-severity wildfires — defined as a fire that kills more than 95% of trees. The transformation in fire behavior has happened fast, with this exponential increase happening in just one generation over the course of 30 years.

These more intense fires have a lasting impact on the ecosystem.

“As more area burns at high severity, the likelihood of conversion to different forest types or even to non-forest increases,” said Sean Parks, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and lead author of the new study.

In the new study, Parks and John Abatzoglou, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California Merced, used satellite imagery to assess fire severity in the western U.S. from 1985 to 2017. The team specifically looked at the area burned at high severity because those fires are more likely to significantly impact forest ecosystems, human safety and infrastructure.

As part of the study, they evaluated whether fire severity varied with fire‐season climate. Results show that area burned at high severity increased across most of the study area and that warmer and drier fire seasons corresponded with higher severity fire. These findings indicate that most of the increase in fire severity is due to human-caused climate change.

Since 1980, the average temperature in the western U.S. has increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. That may not sound like much, but the extra heat energy leads to increased evaporation and drier brush. That, combined with a climate that has been experiencing less rainfall in recent decades, has led to one of the worst megadroughts in 1,200 years, of which 50% can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

The graph below illustrates the connection between warmer temperatures and acres burned. In 2020 alone 10.7 million acres burned in the Western states, about triple the highest annual total on record.

Routine wildfire is a natural and healthy aspect of forests. Cyclical fire acts to eliminate the less healthy parts of the ecosystem, recycles nutrients back into the soil and clears out overgrown vegetation. This not only helps maintain a healthy ecosystem, but also helps naturally reduce fuel so that fires don’t become too large.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/new/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/top/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/hot/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/rising/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/gilded/
https://www.reddit.com/r/NFR2020Livest/wiki/index/

Most trees are well adapted to these routine fires. In the mountainous slopes of California, for example, ponderosa pines, sugar pines and giant sequoias have thick bark that keeps the living tissue underneath insulated from extreme heat. Some tree species also drop their branches which grow closest to the ground. That helps impede fires from climbing up into the canopy and more easily spreading.

For some trees fires are necessary for reproduction. Jack pine trees depend on the high temperatures created by fire to enable their glued-tight cones to open up so that their seeds can disperse, allowing new saplings to sprout.

The catch is that these trees evolved to cope with frequent, low-intensity fires. During a severe fire, even the most well-adapted trees can be overwhelmed by the extreme heat. If too many trees die, forest regrowth can be hampered by the lack of viable seeds.

At the same time, Parks says, the warmer and drier post-fire climate is making it increasingly difficult for seedlings to establish and survive. This makes it harder for forests to return to their pre-fire condition.

As a result of the more severe fires in recent years, in a 2019 study, Parks found up to 15% of intermountain forests in the western U.S. are at risk of disappearing. In drier regions, like the deserts of the southwestern states, that number increases to 30% because fires tend to burn there under even more extreme weather.

There’s little doubt that these high-severity wildfires will continue to escalate in the coming decades. As the western U.S. falls deeper into megadrought due to less reliable rainfall and increasing temperatures, scientists expect severe fires will continue to become even more common.

“One take-home message is that fire severity is elevated in warmer and drier years in the western U.S., and we expect that climate change will result in even warmer and drier years in the future,” Parks said.

A huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has long played a key role in astronomical discoveries collapsed on Tuesday, officials said. The Arecibo Observatory, made famous as the backdrop for a pivotal scene in the James Bond film “GoldenEye” and other Hollywood hits, had been shuttered since August after an auxiliary cable snapped and caused a 100-foot gash on the reflector dish.

Then a main cable broke in early November, leading the National Science Foundation to declare just weeks later that it planned to close the radio telescope because the damage was too great.

Many scientists and Puerto Ricans mourned the news, with some tearing up during interviews. Deborah Martorell, a meteorologist in Puerto Rico, tweeted early Tuesday: “Friends, it is with deep regret to inform you that the Arecibo Observatory platform has just collapsed.”

Operated by the National Science Foundation through the University of Central Florida, the iconic observatory was made up of a fixed 1,000-foot-wide dish antenna built into a bowl-like depression that reflects radio waves from space to a 900-ton instrument platform suspended 450 feet above by cables stretching from three support towers.

For 57 years, the observatory played a leading role observing deep space targets, bodies in the solar system and, using powerful lasers, the composition and behavior of Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Before its collapse, the observatory withstood hurricanes and earthquakes, and played central roles in movies like “GoldenEye” and “Contact.”

A Chinese robot probe landed on the moon Tuesday, touching down on a broad plain known as the Ocean of Storms in a bold attempt to scoop up rocks and soil and return them to Earth for laboratory analysis, the first such lunar sample collection in nearly 45 years.

“At 23:11 on December 1 (10:11 a.m. EST), the Chang’e 5 probe successfully landed on the pre-selected landing area near the front of the moon at 51.8 degrees west longitude and 43.1 degrees north latitude,” the Chinese space authorities reported in translated remarks.

After touchdown, the agency said, the lander deployed its solar wings and a directional antenna and began preparing for sample collection, a procedure expected to take about two days.

“Congratulations to China on the successful landing of Chang’e 5,” tweeted Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science director. “This is no easy task. When the samples collected on the moon are returned to Earth, we hope everyone will benefit from being able to study this precious cargo.”

If the sample collection and return to Earth are successful, China will become only the third nation, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to bring moon rocks back to Earth, and the first since Russia’s robotic Luna-24 mission in 1976.

Named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, the 8,335-pound Chang’e 5 spacecraft features four major components: a lunar orbiter and sample return craft; the lander carrying science instruments and sample collection gear; and a small ascent vehicle mounted atop the lander to carry the collected surface samples back up to orbit for return to Earth.

Launched November 23 atop a powerful Long March rocket, the Chang’e 5 spacecraft braked into orbit around the moon on Saturday and released the lander the next day. On Tuesday, the lander fired its main engine at 9:57 a.m. EST to drop out of orbit for the long-awaited descent to the surface.

During the final stages of the descent, the probe’s flight computer carried out automatic obstacle avoidance procedures before dropping vertically to a gentle touchdown at 10:11 a.m. and beaming back a camera image of the ground below the spacecraft.

The flight plan calls for a short two-day stay on the surface. The lander is expected to photograph its surroundings in detail with high-definition cameras and use a spectrometer and ground-penetrating radar to assess the area near the spacecraft.

A robot arm equipped with a percussive drill and scoop will excavate and pick up loose rock and soil. The arm then will transfer the collected samples up to the ascent vehicle, which is expected to blast off Thursday, using the lower half of the lander as a launch pad.

After a climb back to lunar orbit, the spacecraft will rendezvous and dock with the Chang’e 5 orbiter Saturday and transfer the samples to the return craft for the trip back to Earth. Landing in Inner Mongolia is expected around December 16.

China is executing an incremental approach to its moon program, launching a series of increasingly complex robotic spacecraft to develop and test the propulsion, guidance, navigation and landing systems needed for long-term exploration.

The Chang’e 1 and 2 missions successfully reached lunar orbit in 2007 and 2010 respectively, followed by the Chang’e 3 lunar lander in 2013 and Chang’e 4, which landed on the far side of the moon in 2019. Chang’e 5 is the first of two planned sample return missions and China’s most ambitious moon mission to date.

The pangolin is millions of years old, solitary, usually nocturnal and completely harmless.

But in Africa, hundreds of thousands are poached every year, almost to extinction.

“If you take rhino, elephant ivory, perlemoen, tiger bone, lion bone, combine it altogether — multiplied by a hundred — pangolins still exceed that,” said conservationist Ray Jansen, chairman of the African Pangolin Working Group and a professor at South Africa’s Tshwane University of Technology.

Pangolins are coveted for their scales, which are used in dozens of traditional Chinese medicines, under the false belief they have healing powers.

They have no natural enemies in the wild. Their only predator is humans.

The animals are sold for around $10,000 on the black market. Jansen’s aim is to save as many as he can by going undercover as a buyer. Once poachers have sent him proof of life, he lures them to meetings where the police are waiting.

In one recent case, he helped police catch six men and rescue one of the animals, optimistically named “Fortunate.”

While the men, who face up to 10 years in jail for illegally possessing an endangered animal, were booked into jail, Fortunate was rushed to Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital where veterinarian Karin Lourens and her team tended to his injuries. But she’s doubtful he can be saved. Very few pangolins rescued from traffickers survive the trauma of the ordeal.

Despite years of medical training, Lourens feels helpless.

“The suffering that he went through just for some stupid scale — it’s nothing. There’s no medicinal value,” she told CBS News, visibly upset.

For those that do make it, there is a special haven 250 miles away at the &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve. A handful of rescued pangolins have been released into the wild and are constantly monitored with tracking devices.

That allowed reserve manager Simon Naylor to quickly realize something was wrong with a pangolin rescued over eight months ago.

“We noticed straight away that he was dragging his tail,” Naylor said. The minor injury will be treated by a vet the next day.

Pangolins were initially identified as one of the prime suspects in passing on the coronavirus to humans, but their unique immune system has evolved over millions of years and could also contain answers to defeating the pandemic. Scientists in Vienna have been studying why the pangolin is able to carry the virus without getting sick.

“I think it’s important that we put a lot more resources into understanding these animals and obviously to our benefit, because they do, I think, hold answers to our own health,” said Naylor.

Reports say there are now three coronavirus vaccines, with effectiveness from 90 to 95%. What the reports do not say, however, is: How will they be distributed? How do we get them? Or what they’ll cost? Or how soon they will end the pandemic?

So, correspondent David Pogue decided to ask the experts: Now that you have the vaccine, what next?

“I’ve spent a career of over 35 years in vaccine development, and I can’t recall ever seeing a respiratory virus for which a vaccine provided this high a level of efficacy,” said Bill Gruber, the head of vaccine development at Pfizer. He oversaw the tests of the Pfizer-BionTech vaccine on 44,000 volunteers.

His team learned the good news — that it was 95% effective — on a Zoom call. “They got tears in their eyes,” Gruber said. “This was an extraordinary, extraordinary moment.”

The new, so-called RNA vaccines use a new approach. Instead of giving you a dead or weakened version of the virus itself (like the measles and chicken pox vaccines), these contain only a tiny fragment of the virus.

“It trains your immune system to basically fight off the virus when it encounters it in the future,” said Gruber. “This is a watershed moment in two respects: because obviously it’s safe and effective for coronavirus, but it also could really be a pivotal moment in the ability to develop better vaccines.”

Pfizer tested several different formulas for the vaccine (or constructs, as they call them).

“We didn’t know which one would work best,” Gruber said. “We moved very methodically, but expeditiously.”

But developing the vaccine is only the first hurdle. Now you’ve got to ship it out to people.

Thomas Tighe, the CEO of Direct Relief, a nonprofit that distributes medicine to community health centers and free clinics, explained: “It goes from the manufacturers to the distributors to the CVSes and Walgreens and RiteAids of the world, to doctors’ offices directly.”

And you have to keep it cold. Some of the vaccines are getting down to -70 degrees Celsius [-94 Fahrenheit]. Ultra-cold!

Tighe introduced Pogue to the concept of the cold chain for medicine distribution.

“If you buy ice cream, you’re receiving food through a cold chain. It’s manufactured, it’s kept cold ’til it gets to the distribution center of your grocery store, where you are the picker and packer. You are your own last mile.”

If the FDA gives approval to the new coronavirus vaccines, some of them will soon be crossing the country in special containers surrounded by super-frozen slabs. They assemble the slabs around the box, enveloping it in cold. The temperatures of each box can be monitored throughout its journey via GPS.

And for use on planes and trucks, there’s a self-contained, battery-powered shipping freezer. “On a forklift, you could bring this,” Tighe said. “It’s rated for -20 Celsius, -4 Fahrenheit.”

“It does seem like there’s a big difference between the Pfizer vaccine with its -94 requirements, and the Moderna, which could survive in a lot of these existing cold technologies,” said Pogue.

“The temperature difference is significant,” Tighe said.

The next challenge is making enough of the vaccine. Pfizer, Moderna, and the other pharmaceutical companies are already making their vaccines in huge tanks, 24 hours a day. In fact, they started months ago, even before the trials were complete.

“They gotta come up with 330 million doses?” asked Pogue.

https://nigar41640204.medium.com/couple-arrested-for-flying-to-hawaii-despite-positive-covid-19-tests-5f03cd24d371
https://tasikhasobai.medium.com/genevieve-graduated-college-a-year-early-and-immediately-landed-a-job-at-google-making-six-figures-13a8bebb3b58
https://bomikhors.medium.com/so-why-do-conservatives-consistently-say-they-represent-half-the-country-dc739f8cfe7f
https://maradonamaragese.medium.com/heres-how-much-i-make-from-1-9-million-followers-on-instagram-18caba9b4ff5
https://pagolpolapain1.medium.com/that-town-sapped-his-strength-and-with-each-visit-i-felt-my-friend-fading-596d2bb6b40

“Oh, no, no, it’s much more than that,” said Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih, an economist and an expert on manufacturing. “We should be thinking ten times that much, at least, as a starting point. We should be thinking three-and-a-half billion doses.”

And shipping companies are already preparing: “A lot of the carriers, like FedEx, like UPS, like DHL, they’ve been building these freezer farms in anticipation of having to ship larger quantities of COVID-19 vaccines at very cold temperatures,” Shih said.

The bigger problem, Shih said, will be managing our expectations. The pandemic won’t end once you get your shot: “I really worry about this, people not understanding — ‘I got that shot, I should be good, right? I can go back out to dinner. I can get my hair cut. You know, I can go to the gym.’ Not so fast. Certainly until we get broader immunization, people are still gonna have to wear masks. And they’re still gonna have to practice social distancing.

“I don’t think the American public is ready for that yet,” he said.

“I was probably, with a lot of the country, thinking, ‘This is the beginning of the end of the pandemic,’” Pogue asked.

“No,” Shih replied. “Only when the contagion rate goes down will we get back to some semblance of normal. And that’s gonna take a long time.”

The government plans to allot the vaccines to the states according to their populations. The vaccine will be free to all. The CDC will recommend giving it first to health care workers and older Americans. If all goes well, by the spring of 2021, the vaccine will be available to anyone who wants it.

But the question is: Will enough people want it?

“Convincing people to get vaccinated is going to be our biggest challenge of all,” said Céline Gounder, an epidemiologist at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital. “In the United States, we have a history of vaccine skepticism.

You have people who don’t want to be told by the government what to do. You have people who don’t trust pharmaceutical companies. You also have communities of color that have a long distrust of the health-care system.”

Pogue asked, “This might seem like a really dumb question, but what are people worried about?”

“People are afraid about side effects,” Gounder replied. “They’re afraid that they might get sick. I’ve even heard theories that people think this is a vaccine for mind control. A lot of this is all over the map. We have a real tough road ahead in terms of convincing people that is not the case.”

“So you’re a member of President-Elect Biden’s advisory committee on the coronavirus; is there a plan in place for addressing some of the skepticism?”

“We’re gonna have to think outside the box here and be a bit creative,” Gounder replied. “This is something that we haven’t had to do here before.”

“Do you envision public-service announcements and celebrity endorsements?” Pogue asked.

“That’s not really thinking that far outside the box,” she said. “I think you’re gonna have to see a lot of more grassroots community outreach, partnering with local leaders, people who are trusted by the community.”

Pogue said, “Well, let me ask you this, Dr. Celine Gounder, on national television: would you take the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine for you and your family right now?”

“I will likely be among the first who are lining up to get it,’ she replied. “I am a frontline health care worker. So, I would really love to get vaccinated before I have to put myself at risk in that way again.”

“You’re not worried about mind control?”

“I am not worried about mind control!” Gounder laughed.

The reputation of the AstraZeneca vaccine has suffered because of reporting of testing irregularities. But as for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the whole story seems improbable; the stakes were high, society was shut down, and somehow in the clutch researchers and scientists came up with a new kind of vaccine that they say is 95% effective — in a matter of months.

Pogue asked Pfizer’s Bill Gruber how that was even possible.

“We live in a remarkable age,” he said. “Science has really progressed to a point where we have the tools to do this type of thing. And we have the dedicated people to do it, people who dedicated their lives. You know, everybody’s rowing together, and it’s a really extraordinary thing. It would not have happened without that.”

Severe wildfires burning 8 times more area in western U.S., study finds

“They gotta come up with 330 million doses?” asked Pogue.

Written by Nigar