14 DAY TRIAL // Roughly 1,000 scientists and specialists gathered in San Diego this week for an international wildfire meeting in order to assess the effects of global warming when managing wildfires.
Global warming has already turned wildfires more powerful, thereby more difficult and costly to fight and these increased wildfires could drastically change ecosystems in parts of the world.
This year wildfires in the U.S. have been the most severe and expensive on record: more than 89,000 fires burnt 9.5 million acres, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center. More than $1.5 billion were spent in the fight with the blazes.
Wildfire season usually occurs in late summer and early fall, but climate change is already supposed to be behind longer fire seasons and some specialists are worried about the possibility of a year-round fire season.
Longer seasons of forest fires are already well documented from Alaska and Siberia, as boreal forests are greatly affected by climate change.
"We may need to go to a more permanent work force to manage fires," said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the NGO Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology.
Fires in a future changed climate could convert some types of ecosystems and land cover to another types, better suited to resist fires. Native fauna and flora could be put at risk of extinction.
And the phenomenon could fuel itself. As tons of greenhouse effect carbon dioxide enter into the atmosphere from the fires, more warming will follow.
"We are facing a new reality," said Robin Wills, the president of the Oakland-based Association of Fire Ecology.
"You add on climate change and it's going to make things that much worse," said Thomas Swetnam, leader of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona.
Fighting against wildfires has been complicated by thick forest undergrowth and the increasing encroachment of people near forest land.
Many victims in Australia are due to the urbanization in zones of Eucalyptus forests, which are already highly inflammable, as these trees fill the air with fire keeping volatile oils, and the warming trend is just worsening the issue.
Specialists have projected and used a number of techniques for decades to lower the risk of wildfires.
Intentional controlled fires before and after peak fire season reduce undergrowth, and so the risk and/or the severity of subsequent fires.
Specialists think that regions of high risk should be targeted for controlled burn programs.
With the current explosion of wildfires, old techniques in controlling fires may be surpassed.
"With the types of fires that we're going to be seeing, it's not going to be humanly possible to put all of them out," said Ingalsbee.