A burnout operation on the 31,705-acre Aggie Creek Fire along the trans-Alaska oil pipeline north of Fairbanks on July 16, 2015. Photo by Phillip Spor
The NOAA report was published today in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The fifth edition of “Explaining Extreme Events from a Climate Perspective” includes 25 peer-reviewed research papers that examine episodes of extreme weather from 2015 over five continents and two oceans, according to a press release issued by NOAA. The report features the research of 116 scientists from 18 countries analyzing both historical observations and changing trends along with model results to determine whether and how climate change may have influenced the event.
The strongest evidence for a human influence was found for temperature-related events – the increased intensity of numerous heat waves, diminished snowpack in the Cascades, record-low Arctic sea ice extent in March and the extraordinary extent and duration of Alaska wildfires, according to the report.
“The 2015 fire season in Alaska was remarkable for its early-season total acres burned, which resulted from 1) fuel flammability due to the warm and dry conditions of May and June, and 2) lightning-induced ignitions in June,” authors concluded in the research paper. “The rains of mid-summer likely prevented a new record for area burned in Alaska in 2015. An attribution analysis indicates that 2015’s fuel conditions reached a level that is 34%–60% more likely to occur in today’s anthropogenically changed climate than in the past. The major uncertainty in such an attribution assessment is the as-yet unknown relationship between climate change and the major lightning events that ignite widespread fires.”
Categories: AK Fire Info, Fire Weather
Alaska Wildland Fire Information 