No Virginia, “Climate Change” Did Not Cause the Wildfires

Thank you for printing the “Fires Blaze Across 7,500 Acres in Various Virginia Regions” article from the Virginia Mercury news service.  Although the article was informative, fires need a little more explanation.

The explanation given was simple and accurate as far as it goes: “A combination of dry conditions, with humidity levels as low as 15% or 20%, and strong winds knocking down utility power lines ignited many of the fires, Swift-Turner said,” That’s all true.  It should also be noted that there was no drought in Virginia last Wednesday: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/weekly-palmers/  The Palmer drought index shown on that map takes into account both precipitation and temperature, so what we saw was a normal dry early spring dry spell plus a weather event.

The weather event was uncommon, with dry Arctic air (modified by the time it got here), a high to the southwest, and a low to our northeast.   On Wednesday, the 20th, we had a strong but dry cold front powered by a strong trough aloft.  The strong, dry, cold front was simply weather, not common, but not becoming more common.  There has also been no change in average relative humidity due to global warming.  Precipitation events, particularly light events, are increasing in frequency in Virginia.  Extreme wind events are not changing in frequency over most land areas in the US and globally.

The article included a link to another Virginia Mercury written last June when we started to get smoke from the Canadian wildfires: “As smoke from Canada enters Virginia, research links climate change with more frequent wildfires”

That article included some explanation: “Virginia’s smoky weather conditions coincided with the latest consequential vote by the State Air Pollution Control Board, which decided last Wednesday to withdraw Virginia from a carbon market known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The coincidence sparked debate on the role of climate change in the fires.”  That tells us that these articles are part of the agenda whereby decisions we make, such as staying in an agreement to raise our electricity prices, are supposed to decrease the chance of wildfire.

The “climate change” explanation and both articles leave out the most important factors: fire suppression and fire exclusion causing the build-up of dangerous levels of wildfire fuel.  The Canadians have had many disasters, not just last year but other years, including 2020, when less than 0.1% of their forested areas burned.  Instead, they wasted 100’s millions of dollars that year putting out fires.  What happens when forests are only allowed to burn once every 1,000 years, as was the case in 2020?  Very simple: they become unhealthy with unsustainable fuel buildup, which leads to intense wildfires that cannot be controlled and can completely destroy forests, including fire-tolerant trees.  And, of course, they destroy any dwellings in the way.

The evidence for detrimental fire suppression comes from our own event on Wednesday.  There are unmaintained wild areas around Virginia, but an example of excellence is the Shenandoah National Park.  They plan to burn 88 acres of Big Meadows sometime this month or next.  There was one particularly good day to do that this past week, Friday, in advance of the rain on Saturday.  Instead, all their resources were used up, containing the Rocky Branch fire.  Some of that is the same misplaced priorities as the Canadians.  Alberta, in particular, has an unscientific policy of putting out all fires by the morning after they are detected.   Often, such wrongheaded policies stem from development in wild areas where fire could spread from an uninhabited forest to an inhabited area.  In other cases, prescribed fire is practically banned, as is the case in many counties in California, due to “air quality” regulations.

But air quality is a Hobson’s choice: pristine air quality for most of the time until the forests are overwhelmed with fuel and burn out of control on a fire weather day. Burning or reducing the fuels is the only solution, not “fixing the weather.”

Eric Peterson
Warren County