Melting Arctic ice sheets may be the primary cause of extreme weather around the globe. The most immediate impacts are felt in the Arctic, says Noah Diffenbaugh, but there is strong evidence of impacts on conditions experienced in California.
It’s possible that emissions from this fire season will be close to a billion tons of carbon dioxide by the time the bush fires are extinguished, says Rob Jackson.
It is estimated that the emissions caused by Australia's wildfires are nearly double the country's annual fossil fuel emissions, according to research. "If these runaway fires become more normal, we're in for a very different world," says Rob Jackson.
“Twenty million acres would benefit from having some combination of prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, or managed wildfire,” says Rebecca Miller. “There is no ‘no-fire’ solution in California.”
The California Report includes a segment on research by Chris Field and Rebecca Miller finding that more controlled burns are needed to prevent future wildfires in our state.
Australian wildfires have released an estimate of 900 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. "We have seen years with extremely high carbon dioxide emissions — it's certainly not normal, but these numbers are not at all impossible," says Rob Jackson.
“The important message that people should take away is that there’s good fire and bad fire,” says Chris Field about using prescribed burns to manage the wildfire threat in California.
"The fact that impacts from emissions cross county and state boundaries is a clear indication of the need for federal management," Inês Azevedo and co-authors write.
E-IPER PhD student Rebecca Miller's research on prescribed burns and vegetation thinning helps explain "fuel treatments" and why we need them now in California.
Earth system science professors Kevin Arrigo and Gabrielle Wong-Parodi share their insights on climate change and its effects on wildfire risk in Australia and California.
After a rigorous selection process, Stanford Geological and Environmental Sciences alumna Jessica Watkins, BS '10, has been selected as one of the five women to join NASA as an active astronaut.
The Australian wildfires have become “the iconic representation of climate change impacts,” undeniable trends and unpredictable weather that created “a horrific convergence of events,” says Chris Field.
Paul Segall used ground deformation measurements to create a simplified model of caldera collapse that can explain several surprising features observed in the 2018 Kīlauea eruption.
Severe wildfire conditions from heat and drought can’t be reversed and will increase if temperatures continue to warm, but different policies dealing with how to manage land vulnerable to wildfires can help reduce the risk, says Noah Diffenbaugh.
"Rolling back emissions standards won’t just harm the climate, it will kill people, especially poorer people more likely to live near coal-fired power plants," says Rob Jackson.
Nuclear waste must be moved to dry-cast storage, which "is probably safe for tens of hundreds of years but shouldn’t be considered a final solution," says Rod Ewing .
