WASHINGTON – In a summer of drought, smoke and smog, wildfires could flare up in unusual places across the United States in the coming months – including New England and the Midwest, federal forecasters say.
“The predominant threat seems to be the northeast, which is not normal,” said Jim Karels, fire director for the National Interagency Fire Center, the federal center in Boise that coordinates the national response to wildland fires. “This year it looks like there's a potential for increased fire conditions through August, from Minnesota to Maine and down along the East Coast.”
As wildfires continued across Canada, Chicago, Detroit and other parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes experienced poor air quality in late June, and by the last few days of June it had engulfed some East Coast cities as well.
The summer outlook predicts atypical wildfire activity for the northern US
Recently the fire station summer outlook predicts atypical wildfire activity for the northern tier of the United States as well, but a respite across much of the West, which has been scorched by above-average fire activity in recent years. This is due, in part, to an unusually wet winter and record snowfall.
In a typical year, the green days of summer would be a quiet time for wildfires in the Midwest and Northeast. Normal fire seasons for these areas are early spring and early fall, before new growth begins in the spring and after the summer heat has dried out the grasses and leaves that can fuel a fire.
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The increased risk of fire this summer is due to the dry spring and forecasts for more hot and dry weather this summer.
“It's unusually dry for early June in the Great Lakes and there are above normal temperatures. That's what makes it worse,” said Steve Marien, meteorologist and Eastern Area Fire weather program manager for the National Park Service. “There is quite a bit of drought either in growth or on the ground … especially in the northeastern quarter of the US. It's abnormal for this early in the summer.”
A June 22 update from US Drought Monitor shows a map dotted with drought warnings from Virginia to Vermont and much of the Midwest. The east coast has “abnormally dry” to “moderately dry” conditions. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan's lower peninsula are in moderate drought. And Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska have large areas of extreme drought.
This is very unusual for this time of year, but Marien says conditions can change. Further drought could develop in parts of the Midwest and Northeast, or with luck, rain could restore the region in the coming months.
However, recent rains that cooled the mid-Atlantic around the days of the summer solstice were not enough to lift the region out of moderate drought.
Fire analysts use data and forecasts from the Forest Service and the National Weather Service to make the wildfire forecast, which they update monthly to help fight fires immediately.
The unusual fire patterns could put a strain on some federal firefighting resources, which typically focus on the West in the summer. The National Interagency Fire Center helps coordinate where to strategically place air tankers, helicopters and other resources.
“It evolves around fire threats — weekly and daily we look at the resources we have and what's available,” said Karels, the fire director from NIFC.
Fires burn in North Carolina, Michigan
Already, unexpected blazes have ravaged parts of the East Coast and Midwest.
A fire in Grayling, Michigan on June 3 sparked a fire that burned for four days. It consumed 2,400 acres and caused evacuations before being contained.
Nationally, since June 22, there have been 12 major wildfires in four states: New Mexico, Washington, Arizona and North Carolina, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In North Carolina, a prescribed burn on June 13 raged out of control, burning tens of thousands of acres and growing large enough to be seen from space. Air pollution from the fire has prompted a red alert for air quality.
A prescribed or controlled burn is a tactic that forest managers use to try to mimic the natural patterns of wildfires in a controlled environment—letting the fire burn some debris in a forest and then extinguishing the fire. The NC Wildlife Resources Commission conducted the prescribed burn and the NC Forest Service responded to take command of the fire. It is now capped at 100 percent.
The National Weather Service issued critical fire danger warnings in June for Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And the states of Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the East Coast have seen multiple air quality alerts due to hazy skies, increased ground-level ozone and particulate matter.
Climate change is making fire seasons longer, more intense
The smoke rose from some of the record-breaking days of poor air quality New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago experienced earlier this summer, when particulate matter from wildfires in Canada brought gray and orange skies reminiscent of Star Wars planet Tatooine. But in the last days of June he had returned.
With parts of Canada and the United States at risk for an unusually active fire season this summer, the Midwest and Eastern United States could face more unusual fire and the air pollution that comes with it.
“There will be more days of air pollution because of the fires, there's no doubt about that,” said Andy Hoell, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA. “Where they start, where they burn and also the weather conditions will determine how bad it will be in certain areas.”
There are three main components that create a wildfire: fuel (grasses, plants, leaves, trees, and anything that burns), ignition (from people or lightning), and dry conditions.
Fire smoke contains fine particles of smoke and soot. Particles naturally move with air currents, and the heat from fires can push smoke higher into the atmosphere, helping it travel longer distances. Weather patterns such as wind, pressure systems and rain can affect where smoke from a fire travels.
Fires are a natural part of forest ecology. But the size and number of recent fires are not the norm.
As climate change brings warmer, drier weather, fire seasons are becoming longer and more intense. And some of the fires are burning more and more because there is so much dry fuel available to fuel the flames.
“In general by any metric we look at around the world, fires are getting worse, burning larger areas at higher elevations and burning at longer times of the year.” said Kristina Dahl, the principal climatologist for the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
It is not a linear trend, as some years are better than others. But the area burned by wildfires has doubled in Canada since the 1970s and quadrupled in the Western United States over the same period. Longer, drier summers have erased the concept of “fire season” and turned it into a “fire year” in some parts of the arid West.
“In the case of any particular year it can be difficult to say why there is so much variability from year to year, but we do know that the increase in extreme temperatures, for example, that the Midwest has seen, is linked to humans. -caused climate change,” Dahl said.
Worsening wildfires have created a climate fire feedback, as carbon dioxide from wildfires is released into the atmosphere.
A study published in the journal Advances in Science found that fires in North America's boreal forests — like those burning in Canada this month — have the potential to play a huge role in future fire-related emissions. Boreal forests contain about two-thirds of stored global forest carbon.
Fires in these forests could cause 12 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere over the next three decades, according to a study by scientists from the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Woodwell Climate Research Center and Tufts University. This amount is equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.6 billion fossil fuel cars.
In another studyresearchers found that emissions from the 2020 California wildfires could have wiped out gains the state had made in reducing greenhouse gases since 2003.
“To prevent wildfires from getting worse in the future, one of the most important things we can do is reduce our carbon emissions and wean ourselves off fossil fuels,” said Dahl. “The more we emit in the future, the more we can expect fires to continue to get worse, big picture and long term.”
