Global warming like steroids to forest fires

A scientific journal released a study that shows a significant climb in the severity of forest fires in recent years, which the researchers link to changes in the climate:

Forest fires in the Western United States have occurred morefrequently, burned longer, and covered more acres since 1987—and globalwarming is a big part of the underlying cause—according to a researchpaper published in July 2006 by the journal Science.

Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and theUniversity of Arizona found four times as many large wildfires occurredin Western forests between 1987 and 2003 compared to the previous 16years. The more recent fires burned 6.5 more land, the average durationof the fires increased from 7.8 to 37 days, and the overall fire seasonduring those years grew by an average of 78 days.

It will be fun to see what creative excuses the anti-science, pro-oil lobbyists will give to explain this new report.  These are significant numbers here.  The change in duration, as highlighted above, is more than a 350 percent increase.  How can that happen?  A British group released a similar study on forest fires late last week, which came to the same conclusion.  Forest fires are especially bad because they release even more CO2 into the atmosphere.  Carbon levels have never been this high in 650,000 years, according to another report.

The July heat wave in the Southwest really didn't help things.  This week, South Carolina is dealing with similarly severe weather.  Parts of Aiken County reached 110.