California Burning, 2020

A few months ago, in the spring of 2020, we shared stories about our oddly inverted 2019-2020 rainy season and the longer-term climate changes impacting California. As we slid into what started as routinely stagnant and unremarkable summer weather patterns, we hoped to turn our attention toward the diversity of stories that combine to make our state’s geography so golden. But nature had other plans and we are now forced to focus on what has become – for weeks – a top national and global news story in a year already filled with tragedy: two unprecedented late summer weather patterns and the resulting fire storms have rampaged across California and surrounding states, terrorizing residents, and leaving catastrophic paths of death and destruction.

Warning Before the Fires. The California Public Utilities Commission circulated this Fire-Threat Map more than two years before the 2020 firestorms. Similar maps typically use many variables to anticipate risks around our expanding wildlands-urban interface. Extensive portions of the shaded areas burned in 2020 when more than 3% of the state was incinerated in less than a month.

The stories and images and data continue to resemble science fiction rather than anything we thought we could experience, even after the warning signs from previous years that have been outlined in our publication and this project. As of this writing, more than 20 out-of-control wildfires have been burning for weeks that include the first, third, and fourth largest wildfires in state history. By the middle of September, 2020, more landscape burned (well over 3 million acres, more than 3% of the entire state) compared to any other year as we just entered into our traditional fire season. (By mid-October, more than 4 million acres (4% of the state) was scorched.) Though California fires raged from Oregon to the Mexican border and from the coast to the Nevada border, neighboring western states were also burning, roughly doubling the total charred acreage. Entire towns have been leveled in Washington and Oregon as 1 out of 10 residents in Oregon were under evacuation orders. Heroic firefighters and other public servants and volunteers have been exhausted trying to establish a sense of order while surrounded by an atmosphere that feels as out-of-control as in any time in state history. The apocalypse red and orange skies of smoke that blanketed our state have sickened millions. How did we get here so quickly and how will we get out of this mess?

Unprecedented 2020. Wild fluctuations in carbon emissions (in millions of tons) from California fires are mostly dependent on weather patterns during each fire year. The startling 2020 data covers only up to mid-September. By October, you could add about 25% to that 2020 bar. Graphic: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

We have dedicated a lot of time and space in our publication and on this web site to research that might help us understand the fires we are experiencing. We know that four of the big culprits are climate change, forest and wildland management, the introduction of nonnative invasive species, and our reckless encroachment into wild places. (You will find a more detailed essay about forest management after the end of this story.) But it is our unforgivable historical ignorance about the natural systems and cycles that surround us in Mediterranean environments that are adapted to and even sculpted by occasional fires, which brings these factors together to create the most deadly and disastrous fire storms.

A Hint of Subtropical Instability. After a relatively unremarkable early summer, 2020, patterns changed in the middle of August. Dying tropical disturbances were drawn north along the California coast, caught within the clockwise flow of air around an expanding high pressure system to our east. Unfortunately, the remaining marginal instability didn’t include enough moisture to produce prolonged, soaking rainfall. Instead, only a few passing showers and a lot of virga (precipitation that evaporates before reaching the surface) decorated the skies.

We know that our cool, wet winters nurture growth, but are followed by long, dry summers that can dehydrate the hardiest plant communities and challenge them to survive, even in average years, until the first rains of autumn. The iconic climate that helped make California powerful and famous has partnered with climate change, and is now threatening to destroy us. The curse of the wildlands urban interface (known as WUI) is that we dared long-established natural forces by ignoring them to develop and expand our at-risk communities, forcing nature to teach us painful lessons about who is in charge.    

Subtropical Sunsets, Mid-August, 2020. Altocumulus were among the middle-altitude clouds that painted our sunsets as spent tropical systems spun off the southern California coast and became extra tropical, removed from the warm ocean waters that once fed them. Eventually, the trains of moisture and instability rotated north up the coast and then turned northeast, making landfall as spectacular electrical storms in central and northern California.

This summer’s nightmare started last winter when parts of central and northern California (such as the Bay Area) suffered from another record drought that included the entire January-February period that normally marks the peak of the rainy season, and the first February ever with no recorded precipitation. By spring, expanses of northern and central California were left with only about half of their average total precipitation and far less than even southern California received for the season. We walked you through this geographically inverted rainy season in a previous story on this web page.

High Pressure Edges West, August 13. We will use these 500mb charts from San Francisco State University to follow the upper-level pressure and air flow patterns that determine our weather. Here, note the expanding high pressure over the desert southwest. The clockwise rotation of winds out of that high brought a dead tropical-turned-extra tropical system into the California bight, announcing the statewide pattern change.

Summer began relatively mild, but there were hints of trouble to our east. A strong and stubborn high pressure system anchored over the desert southwest and occasionally wobbled toward southeastern California during July. This blocked out most monsoon moisture and compressed the air to produce record heat in Arizona and New Mexico that encroached into California’s southeastern deserts. By the end of July, much of Arizona (including Phoenix) had broken several high temperature records, including the hottest month ever recorded and – by far – the greatest number of days with temperatures above 110. Their heat continued into August, but the ominous high pressure system began to expand and migrate west toward California and Nevada.

Thunderstorms Build. By August 15, winds flowing out of the southeast around that building desert southwest high pressure were advecting moisture up from Mexico across southern California. Afternoon heating along mountain barriers forced the moist air to rise and cool to its dew point until cumulus built into cumulonimbus and afternoon thunderstorms. The annual summer “monsoon” had finally arrived in our local mountains and deserts, but it was fleeting and wouldn’t stop there as the moisture was quickly pushed farther north. We look over the caves, cormorants, pelicans, sea lions, and snorkelers of La Jolla Cove and toward inland mountains of San Diego County.

California’s deserts had already been baking, but the high center was strengthening and its compressionally-heated air masses were nudging toward the Golden State. Inland temperatures sizzled until Death Valley topped out at 130 degrees in mid August. This approached the hottest temperature (134) ever recorded there, but it could be the hottest temperature ever confirmed on Earth at an official weather station with a reliable thermometer (see an earlier story on this web site). By this time, record high temperatures were being recorded around the state, particularly at inland stations closer to the center of upper level high pressure.

Tropical Moisture Streams North. This NOAA image shows moisture content in the atmosphere. By August 16, the desert southwest high had nudged toward California, spinning air clockwise from the south and over the state. As if simulating a modified atmospheric river, bands of moist air were dragged from tropical waters off the west coast of Mexico parallel to the Baja coast, eventually turning into California. They were further drawn into the counterclockwise flow of the upper-level low off the Pacific Northwest coast and destabilized. Numerous electrical storms came ashore in central and northern California and then dragged inland, sparking hundreds of fires from thousands of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. NOAA/NESDIS/STAR GOES ABI BAND 09. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.

The strength and position of this high pressure system was remarkable, not just because it clamped a lid on the already heated air masses that plagued California. The clockwise motion of air spinning around the high connected with tropical moisture and disturbances west of Mexico, driving them from south-to-north off and along the California coast. (This monsoon-style moisture train usually flows from Mexico up into the desert southwest during late summer as a smaller high pressure center normally positions closer to the four corners region.)

Unusual “Monsoon” in Northern California? The upper-level high that is normally anchored over the four corners region in summer has greatly expanded and nudged toward Nevada. Note the tropical air masses and disturbances as they are dragged from west of Mexico around the high and delivered into central and northern California as they turn toward the northeast. Source: San Francisco State University.

Moist, unstable air masses gradually veered toward the northeast around the massive high and ahead of a counterclockwise spinning low pressure system off the Pacific Northwest coast. Batches of subtropical moisture, exhausted tropical disturbances, and instability flowed up the coast and inland into central and northern California. The bands of moisture had just enough energy to trigger spectacular electrical storms that trained off the ocean toward the coast (where summer thunderstorms are almost unheard of in the normally stable summer air masses) and over inland mountains. But the mostly high-based cumulonimbus clouds often didn’t drop enough rainfall to snuff out the hundreds of fires sparked by thousands of lightning strikes that lit up mountain slopes from the coast to Nevada. Last winter’s drought would conspire with the unusual “dry” lightning and the intense heat wave to produce the most destructive series of fires in California history.

“Firenado” Goes Viral. Numerous out-of-control fires followed northern California electrical storms in mid-August. This Loyalton wildfire, in northeastern California’s Lassen County north of Tahoe, created its own weather. An already unstable atmosphere was heated by the fire, causing the air to rise rapidly and form a magnificent pyrocumulonimbus cloud. Doppler radar showed up to five separate vortices whirling into this firestorm, forcing the National Weather Service to issue an unheard-of fire tornado warning for the area. Turbulent winds could reach over 100 mph in these fire tornadoes on uneven surfaces. Though this image was sometimes credited to BBC and Reuters, it went viral on social media.

Eventually, the powerful high pressure system that helped produce these conflagrations weakened and backed off. A relatively cooler onshore flow gave especially northern Californians a brief chance to catch up with the numerous fires.

Smoke Clouds Gather, August 21. The subtropical monsoon-like electrical storms are gone, but their fires are raging in central and northern California, sending smoke clouds that are just hints of the future. Firefighters were hopeful that the brief respite in heat and the refreshing southwest breezes off the Pacific would aid their efforts. But, another and even stronger high pressure system would build over California within about a week, bringing a brutal and historic heat wave. Note the latest dying tropical system spinning off the coast of Baja at the bottom of the image, the isolated thunderstorms popping up over southern California mountains, and the smoke already settling in the Central Valley. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.
Battle Between Cool and Hot. An upper level trough off the Pacific Northwest Coast bumps against high pressure over the southwest, driving cooling breezes from the Pacific over northern California. This more “normal” late-summer weather pattern would not hold. Source: San Francisco State University.
Returning to Normal? The marine layer reasserts itself as more normal summer weather patterns seem to be returning by August 24. Many of the mostly lightning-sparked fires continue to spill smoke that settles in the Central Valley. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.
Owens Valley Smoke. By late August, onshore breezes had spread smoke from California wildfires over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Visibility was obscured as it settled in the Owens Valley. This is normally a crystal clear view over the Alabama Hills toward the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Locals referred to their predicament as living in the Owens Valley “smoke bowl”.
Enhanced Aspenglow. Defined as the glow of mountaintops during sunrise or sunset, you will notice the aspenglow as we look across Tioga Lake and toward the moon and Mt. Dana in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains. Though westerly winds skim over the mountaintops and refresh the air at this elevation in late August, you might still notice the clouds’ brighter orange glows. These clouds finally condensed from the lifting of moist air off the Pacific so they could reflect the sunlight made deeper orange and red by smoke from fires still burning on the other side of the mountains.
Crepuscular Cumulus. Though refreshing upper-level westerly breezes cleared much of the smoke from the higher eastern Sierra Nevada peaks in late August, there were enough smaller particulates remaining to enhance these crepuscular rays radiating around this towering cumulus just before sunset.
Another Bad Omen? Stable onshore breezes streamed over the mountains and into southern California’s western Antelope Valley, fanning this late-August fire and spreading yet another smoke cloud over yet another California region. It was just the latest small example of what would become a much bigger problem as high pressure would rebuild and winds would shift to bring a punishing heat wave within a week.

But, another powerful high pressure quickly built over the state by early September before the fires could be controlled. As forecast, it eventually anchored just inland over Nevada and wobbled over California and Oregon, eventually squeezing up against a deep, early-season upper level low dropping down the east side of the Rocky Mountains. Intense pressure gradients between the two systems compressed very dry air masses and sent them toward the coast as an offshore flow that was further compressed down mountain slopes, heated, and dried. National Weather Service warnings had become reality.

Massive High Pressure Dominates. By early September, a monster upper level high pressure system was building over the state. Weather forecasters were warning of record high temperatures and extreme fire danger in the days ahead as the compressed air masses become super heated and the marine layer is pushed out to sea. Source: San Francisco State University.
Strongest High Pressure, Record High Temperatures. By Labor Day Weekend, some of the highest levels of 500mb were recorded over Nevada and California. The global average height is around 560dm (5,600m or 18,000 feet), but you can see 500mb up to 6,011m at the center of this powerful, massive high pressure system. The towering system compressed dense air toward the surface until record high temperatures were measured across the state. Source: San Francisco State University.
No Refreshing Breezes Here. Note on the same day (September 6) the massive 1034mb surface high pressure that dominates off the Pacific coast, extending into western states. For comparison, global surface air pressure averages around 1013mb. No storms or sea breezes are going to sneak through this barrier with surface winds turning clockwise around it. Source: San Francisco State University.
Making Things Worse. Record heat would continue through the next day as the upper level high pressure expanded out over the Pacific and over the western states. New fires exploded in the dry heat and winds. Source: San Francisco State University.
Swirling the Smoke, Waiting for Disaster. As a pitiful marine layer tries to form along the southern California bight, it begins to mix with the smoke. High pressure has squashed, capped, and trapped accumulating smoke from multiple fires during this epic heat wave. As the skies across the state turn orange and red, note the direction of the wind and smoke in northern California and Oregon. Firefighters are about to experience a dramatic switch in the winds. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.
Fresh Smoke Clouds. As pressure gradients turn more offshore during the record Labor Day weekend heat wave, smoke from multiple fires pours over major cities. Here, fresh smoke from a wildfire in inland San Diego county drifted over La Jolla. Note it is not yet orange or red as in thicker layers or during sunset or sunrise, since this thinner layer allows many colors of the spectrum to pass through. Also note the small pyrocumulus fractus clouds attempting to form around condensation nuclei.

These unusually early-season Diablo winds in northern California and Santa Ana-like winds in southern California rejuvenated the existing fires and fanned new fires like blowtorches. It is notable that firefighters in Oregon used “blowtorch” to describe “powerful winds from the east that blasted fires down mountain slopes to incinerate entire towns.” These accounts from Oregon are very familiar to Californians during autumn, but this was only Labor Day weekend.

Offshore Nightmare. By September 8, an unusually early upper level low pressure system (far right) had dropped down into the Rocky Mountains, creating a stronger pressure gradient between it and our west coast high. Powerful winds had turned dramatically offshore in northern California and Oregon, creating that “blowtorch effect” of hot, dry winds out of the east that would blow walls of flames through entire communities and push smoke clouds hundreds of miles out to sea. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.

Aloft, the center of the towering, high pressure air mass even breached historic thresholds of 600 decameters (or 6,000m) altitude. This measures the height of 500mb pressure (roughly halfway through a column of air in our atmosphere, that midpoint averaging around 5,600m altitude (about 18,000 feet)). Temperatures soared over 100 degrees along the coasts from San Diego to San Francisco.

Stuck Under the High. The next day (September 9), the upper level high pressure that helped orchestrate the heat wave, winds, and fire calamities was stuck over the west coast, blocking any form of relief, flanked by two low pressure systems with no mechanism to move them.

A few miles inland, scores of records were broken, and some of them were the highest temperatures ever recorded for those locations. In southern California, the hottest temperatures ever recorded west of the low deserts included Woodland Hills at 121 F (highest ever in L.A. County) and Chino and Fillmore at 120. Downtown L.A. peaked at 111 degrees, while numerous coastal valley locations also breached 110. Just across the border, coastal Tijuana, Mexico, reported 109 F. Farther north, Solvang and San Luis Obispo breached 120 degrees. Stockton heated to 111 and Napa hit 120. UC Berkeley Lab, at about 888 feet elevation, experienced one day with a high of 108 degrees F and an overnight low of 87. Calfire crews and local firefighters were outgunned by nature as fires exploded and tore through plant communities and human communities. All of this leaves us with scenes of unprecedented devastation. 

Stagnant and Smoking. By September 10, California and western Oregon were experiencing the worst air quality in the world. It would become the worst air quality ever measured over such a long period of time across such a large area of the state. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.

Besides the communities and homes that have burned throughout the west, an area larger than some eastern states has been scorched. Entire national forests were shut down to protect visitors from getting trapped after so many were rescued, while the less fortunate never made it out of more remote landscapes. It would take weeks or more to find the remains of all the missing victims.

Capped and Stationary. The stubborn, persistent upper level high pressure capped our air masses as they subsided toward the surface. Breezes occasionally oscillated between gently onshore and offshore, swirling the accumulating smoke that choked the skies and the residents of Oregon and California. Source: San Francisco State University.
Welcome to the Orange Beach. During and after Labor Day weekend, accumulating smoke from western wildfires was capped and trapped by stagnant, blocking high pressure. Layers of smoke particles grew thicker. Just as smaller molecules in a pristinely clear sky selectively scatter the shorter wavelengths of the visible spectrum (such as violets and blues closer to 0.4 micrometers), the larger smoke particles selectively scatter longer wavelengths (such as orange and red, closer to 0.7 micrometers) toward our eyes and cameras.

Meanwhile, it is not surprising that the measured air quality had never been so bad across the entire state for such a long period. Layers of smoke particles that had already interfered with the shorter-wavelengths of the visible spectrum (such as blues) are efficient in selectively scattering the longer-wavelength (closer to 0.7 micrometers) yellows, oranges, and reds of ROYGBIV toward the surface (known as Mie scattering), illuminating our skies in those colors. As multiple smoke plumes with particles of various sizes towered up through different layers of atmosphere, they encountered wind shear that spread them in different directions until smoke blanketed the entire state. The layers of smoke clouds grew thicker until forecasters had trouble predicting daytime temperatures that were more than five degrees cooler than under a smokeless sky. The smoke produced condensation nuclei that mixed with the marine layer to create thicker haze and smoky fogs near the coast. Subdued daytime high temperatures inland resulted in weaker afternoon temperature and pressure gradients that further calmed winds during the day.

Mass Migration to Smoky Beaches. Crowds were already gathering during early mornings on a record hot Labor Day weekend in southern California. As temperatures soared up to 120 degrees inland, even some beach temperatures hit the 90s. The marine layer would later mix with nuclei in the relentless smoke to cast eerie backgrounds and shadows.

The stagnant, capping high pressure system that followed the record heat wave resulted in gentle pressure gradients with relatively calm winds away from the fires that oscillated from slightly offshore to slightly onshore for days, swirling and settling the accumulating smoke. Besides the falling ash, smaller particulates lodged into our lungs. The eerie red and orange haze may have lasting effects on Californians’ health, just as the destruction of our ecosystems and landscapes will have lasting effects on plant communities, wildlife, and anyone who attempts to connect with nature in California. However, health officials’ research suggests that most of us will recover relatively rapidly compared to the slower process of succession that heals scorched ecosystems over many years. By the middle of September, a low pressure system approaching the Pacific Northwest would eventually usher in some refreshing breezes off the Pacific that pushed much of the smoke away and to the east of northern California. Traces of that smoke were noticed and measured across the continent all the way over the North Atlantic (see the NASA images at the end of this story).          

Red September. Numerous photos like this one in the Bay area were posted on social media by the City of San Francisco and the California Highway Patrol to warn residents to stay indoors and remind drivers to use their headlights. The layers of smoke grew thick enough to depress high temperatures by more than five degrees across California.

We will mourn the victims and use names to remember the largest fires (such as the August Complex that burned through September) in history. But every one of these latest worst “natural” disasters challenges us again to rethink our relationships with nature and to better understand the natural systems and cycles that determine whether and how we will survive and live and thrive in the Golden State. Our most recent jargon-gone-popular term, wildlands-urban interface (WUI), must also refer to the sky and the weather and climate that we all observe and interact with every day. So, we might not know what the coming autumn and winter have in store (except for the inevitable Diablo and Santa Ana winds and then the debris flows that will pour out of freshly-burned landscapes during winter storms), but we know that nature won’t be waiting for us to reconnect. We will continue our attempts to reconnect with you through our project and this web site. The following essay about forest management is one example.            

Battles Between Low and High Resume in mid-September. Stubborn high pressure holds on in the southwest as an approaching Pacific low finally spins refreshing winds counterclockwise into northern California and promises showers in Oregon. Onshore westerly winds blow smoke from Pacific Northwest fires across the continent; these smoke plumes would be observed and measured all the way over the North Atlantic. Skip down to the end of this page to view remarkable NASA images that follow the smoke. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.
Upper Level Relief. By September 17, the deepening upper-level Pacific Northwest trough makes its move east, knocking off the top of the high. Quenching showers will spread over the Oregon fires and into far northern California, while southwest winds help mix and clear the smoke and drag some high-level subtropical moisture over central California. Source: San Francisco State University.
Low Pressure to the Rescue. Finally, counterclockwise circulation around the approaching north Pacific trough pushes southwesterly winds especially over northern California, scouring out much of the smoke that has plagued the state for days. Middle and upper level moisture from remnants of tropical system Karina are drawn into the flow and over central California. Showers will only make it into Oregon and northern California, but the high pressure that has dominated the state is gradually loosening its grip. Skip down to the end of this page to view beautiful NASA images that follow the smoke across the continent. Source: NOAA/National Weather Service.
We Can See our Sky Again! By September 17, layers of smoke can still be seen lingering against the mountains here in Santa Monica. But air quality was improving so that Californians could view middle- and upper-level clouds streaming overhead from the southwest, only the remnants of tropical system Karina. The two epic weather anomalies that terrorized California in late summer 2020 had passed, leaving us to wonder – and perhaps worry about – what the coming autumn and winter might bring.

Our Tragic Comedy of Errors Goes up in Flames: An Additional Essay on Forest Management in 2020

It is necessary to pause here and respond again to the media and political frenzy that has erupted over the management of California’s forests. The story is complicated and there is plenty of finger-pointing to be done. But the research always directs us back to some fundamental historic problems caused by our national obsession with chasing short-term profits and solutions that have cost us lives and fortunes in the long run.

Ranger Station Survives. The “Railroad Fire” burned more than two weeks through the Sierra National Forest before being contained in 2017. This Westfield Ranger Station was the only survivor among the historically significant buildings dating back to the 1930s and 40s that were part of the Miami Field Base, where scientific studies of bark beetles and other infestations helped inform our management of these forests near Monarch Grove and beyond.

More than a century ago, the nation’s seemingly endless western forests were viewed by many as inexhaustible resources to provide building materials and other timber products. Our national forests were often valued by the tree and the acre as dense tree farms to be cyclically logged and replanted with the fastest-growing, most valuable species in homogeneous forests that produced the greatest short-term profits, sometimes at the expense of multiple uses. It was quickly recognized that fires cut in to those profits. One of the primary reasons for establishing and funding what became the U.S. Forest Service was to organize efforts to extinguish fires as soon as they erupted. Little was known about the long-term consequences of these policies, but we now know that they disrupted thousands of years of natural evolution and succession that had produced diverse, resilient forests with rich mixes of species adapted to occasional fires. Recently, we have realized the unfortunate results of this colossal experiment that was accidentally launched during the 1800s.  

California’s Burning Bush? Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) is a common chaparral shrub (aka greasewood) with flammable oils. It produces seeds that may lay dormant for years until scorched by fire. It also crown sprouts after being burned to the ground. It can burst into flames when temperatures reach 800 degrees F (427 C) as the fire advances. Scientists measure the moisture content of this plant to assess fire dangers in the chaparral, especially throughout southern and central California, where dangerous wildfires are common and there are few or no trees, usually well outside National Forest boundaries.

Too often lost in these debates is how many of our trees grow on private lands in a state where only slightly more than half of the forests were managed by the U.S. Forest Service and more than 90% of our original forests have been logged at least once. Responsible, local, private timber companies know that sustainable logging results in healthier forests that retain their long-term value. But some of these smaller companies were consumed (especially in the late 1900s) by distant absentee Wall Street financiers and larger multinational corporations to pay off debts and gain quick quarterly profits. Too often, long-term forest sustainability was a second thought. This led to more reckless overlogging and mismanagement that we are still living with.

Fire Threats Without Trees. At first glance, wildfire might be the last thing on a visitor’s mind while admiring iconic California landscapes, such as this one from Santa Barbara Harbor. But, recent wildfire catastrophes have awakened us. It is not so difficult now to understand how a wildfire, blow-torched by powerful, hot, dry, offshore winds (locally known as sundowners there), could barrel down the slopes of the not-so-distant Santa Inez Mountains, burning through hillside housing developments, and right into the harbor. Forest management plays little or no role in controlling these southern California conflagrations since they commonly burn through fire-adapted chaparral and coastal sage scrub communities. Cut down every tree in California and many of these fires will continue to rage.

During recent decades, California has responded to these historic debacles with controlled burns and other forest thinning policies over relatively small areas. But, due mainly to lack of funding and pushback from local communities, ecotourist industries, air quality management districts, and other multiple users who are temporarily inconvenienced and negatively impacted by these efforts, scientists estimate that less than 10% of our forests are being properly managed with our more informed policies. Meanwhile, U.S. Forest Service funding for these healthier forest programs has been cut as federal budgets are depleted in attempts to extinguish conflagrations that are consuming communities and threatening lives. These short-sighted funding policies have led some to sarcastically rename the National Forest Service the “National Fire Service”.

Fire Threats and Fire Breaks. A flank of the out-of-control wildfire that burned this marginal dry pine forest in the San Jacinto Mountains two years earlier was finally stopped right on the wildland-urban interface boundary, before it could destroy many mountain homes. As climates warm, these natural chaparral/woodland/forest plant community ecotones have been creeping toward higher elevations that are cooler and more moist. More frequent fires are accelerating those migrations. The good news is that the cabins and nearby town of Idyllwild gained an unintended temporary firebreak

Recently, local communities have been successfully organizing to decrease fire risks, in cooperation with the state and USFS, through the California Fire Safe Council. This is a big development in many of those wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities, where they have been thinning trees and brush and creating defensible spaces within and around their neighborhoods. These efforts even include annual property inspections with requirements that residents maintain defensible spaces around their properties. Note these excerpts from their web pages:
“The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) formed the California Fire Safe Council with the intent of seeing that local fire safe councils were formed with the single charge of educating the local public about fire abatement practices that can save their homes in the event of a fire.”
“Fire Safe Councils throughout California educate homeowners about community wildfire preparedness activities while working with local fire officials to design and implement projects that increase the wildfire survivability of their communities. Many Fire Safe Councils have successfully implemented such projects as hazardous-fuel-reduction projects, Community Wildfire Protection Planning, and homeowner training.”

Superheated Devastation. This is what can happen when fire invades relatively young, dense forests lacking the diversity and resilience of forests that have evolved over thousands of years. Can you see any survivors? We are in the western Sierra Nevada Mountains, nearing Yosemite Valley.

You can see that, in recent years, many Californians have been actively and often aggressively implementing policies that decrease fire risks in their communities. But, within landscapes riddled with poorly regulated developments encroaching into fire-prone ecosystems, accumulated historical mismanagement, a political atmosphere that rewards short-sighted budget cutting, and accelerating climate change, it has been too little, too late for too many communities. We face an uphill battle even with aggressive, all-out, no-holds-barred course corrections, due to the synergy of other factors that we have repeatedly outlined in our publication and this web site.  

Northern California Forest Succession. This view from the Scott Mountains and into Klamath National Forest looks across a landscape with diverse tree species. Temperature, precipitation, climate change, soil chemistry, slope exposure, fires, and logging combine with a host of other factors to determine which species survive and how these forests will evolve.

This is also because so many California fires start and burn in grassland, coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and woodland plant communities that will always grow dense and ripe for fire, but don’t involve forests of trees. Add aggressive, nonnative, invasive species (such as cheatgrass), that quickly dehydrate into flammable matchsticks from early summer until the next rainy season. Add other species that attack, weaken, and destroy our trees during unprecedented droughts, such as the bark beetles that feed on our conifers, and the mistakenly introduced Goldspotted Oak Borer that is now chewing through our Black Oaks and Canyon Live Oaks in some woodlands. Add climate change that is sucking the moisture out of plants and soils and you have the perfect science-fiction-like reality that we are living through.

Controlling Fire in a Young Forest Community? This young conifer forest in McArthur-Burney Falls State Park in northern California has been thinned and appears to be managed so that diverse species can thrive without too much crowding. Savvy California forest managers have learned that our better understanding of natural systems and cycles will lead to healthier and safer forests in the long run. The experiments and the learning continue…

Oversimplified stories about how Native Americans managed some California landscapes with fire are informative and useful, but they are only starting points in a state where more than 90% of fires are already started by humans. Things have changed. It’s the end of the world as we knew it and our short-term thinking and policies have created some complicated problems. We already understand how healthy humans need healthy ecosystems. Our challenge is to find long-term solutions and make long-term investments that will blend us back into the natural systems and cycles that nurture us, just as climate change transforms those systems.  

   

NASA Images Use Science and Technology to Display Awesome Nature

By the end of September, NASA had built some incredible images (using the latest remote sensing technologies) displaying how our biomass was burning into the atmosphere. They show West Coast smoke plumes as they were steered by surrounding pressure systems and transported east. We must share these remarkable images from that three day period, marking the end of our record heat and wind storms.

NASA Remote Sensing Magic. Scan across these satellite images in chronological order from top to bottom. Watch the high pressure system over the southwest states as it gradually begins to weaken and shift south. Notice how the upper level low pressure system (spinning counterclockwise) intensifies off the Pacific Northwest Coast and begins to move onshore. This will bring quenching showers into Oregon and down to the northern edge of California during the following days. Follow the West Coast smoke plumes as they are eventually caught between these two systems and carried into the upper level prevailing westerlies, transported across the continent, and finally steered over the North Atlantic Ocean. These same westerlies and the jet stream should gradually sag south as winter approaches, ushering in Pacific storms that should finally end this year’s fire season. Note how the meandering tropical systems interact with the smoke plumes that are drifting eastward.
(A host of satellite imagery technologies were used to build these images. Black carbon from the west coast fires data comes from the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which assimilates information from satellite, aircraft, and ground-based observing systems.)
Source: “NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC and VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.”

 

Verified by MonsterInsights