Wild Fires
Greenland is on fire, again.
In southwest Greenland, the normally semi-arid region has experienced increasing temperatures and rainfall. As a result, increased vegetation in the rapidly changing landscape now has a sufficient fuel supply that can trigger wildfires by either natural or human-caused activity.
The fire, discovered July 10, 2019, by NASA satellites, is the second wildfire to break out in the same vicinity since July of 2017. Like the 2017 fires, the current fire was preceded by warming temperatures and dry conditions.
Alaska Chokes on Wildfires as Heat Waves Dry Out the Arctic
Several studies, as well as ongoing satellite monitoring, show that fires are spreading farther north into the Arctic, burning more intensely and starting earlier in the year, in line with what climate models have long suggested would happen as sea ice dwindles and ocean and air temperatures rise.
Wildfire Smoke Associated with more ER Visits
Heart Association Study on Wildfire Smoke 4/18
DALLAS, April 11, 2018 — Smoke from wildfires may send people – particularly seniors – to hospital emergency rooms (ERs) with heart, stroke-related complaints, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
Are Devastating Wildfires a New Normal? Its Actually Worse than that Climate Scientist Says
CBS News California Fires 2018
"A new normal makes it sound like we've arrived in a new position and that's where we're going to be," said Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science and the director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. "But if we continue to burn fossil fuels and put carbon pollution into the atmosphere, we are going to continue to warm the surface of the Earth. We're going to get worse and worse droughts and heat waves and superstorms and floods and wildfires."
'A prisoner of environment': is it time to leave the American west?
The Guardian- Smoke in the Western US 10/2018
Maricela Ruelas is a manager at a vineyard in Medford, Oregon. She trims, harvests – whatever needs doing. This year, she has done much of that work in a face mask. Wildfire smoke has plagued her and her fellow workers nearly continuously for “a couple of months”, she said through a translator, leading to pounding headaches. “It was horrible, horrible this year.”
