[MCN] Climate & fire: Experts critical of LATimes report

[Lance Olsen]

Los Angeles Times
October 24, 2015, 6:00 a.m.
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84806998/

Was Gov. Jerry Brown wrong to blame this year's epic California 
wildfires on climate change? An Oct. 18 Times article said he was.

Since then, several experts have written to say the article was wrong.

Max Moritz, UC Berkeley:

It's splitting hairs, as scientists often will, to note that we may 
not know conclusively whether climate change has caused this 
particular drought and these specific wildfires.

As a wildfire scientist, I find it troubling that this nuance became 
front-page news because it implies more uncertainty about climate 
change than there really is among experts.

Climate Resolve executive director Jonathan Parfrey bluntly assesses 
the article:

The Times really blew it in this piece.

For example, the recent UC Irvine wildfire study was wildly 
misinterpreted. The Times failed to note the study's most likely 
outcome for the period of 2040-60: The area to be burned by Santa 
Ana-wind-induced fires will increase by 64%, and acres consumed by 
summer fires will increase by 77%.

Alex Hall, director of the UCLA Center for Climate Change Solutions, 
clarifies what we do and don't know:

The article misleads readers by implying that science is in on this, 
and any link between fires and climate change has been disproved. In 
fact, a detection-and-attribution study - an analysis of the 
probability that the current fire season in California would play out 
as it has, if climate change were not in the picture - has not been 
done.

Even if the link has not been definitively proved, the scientific 
works referenced in the article provide plenty of reason to suspect 
climate change is playing some role in the severity of this fire 
season. Climatologist Park Williams' study shows that human-caused 
warming is contributing to drier conditions, which would make fuels 
more susceptible to burning. The study I co-wrote with UC Irvine and 
UC Davis colleagues shows that heat is an important determinant of 
how much area is burned by fire - particularly in those fires, like 
the ones we have been experiencing all summer, not driven by Santa 
Ana winds. So the warming climate we're already experiencing should 
increase the area burned.

The Times should take care to more accurately characterize scientific 
evidence in the future.

-- 
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"Our results are quite striking. First, temporal increases of climate 
change-associated mortality do not occur only in regions with 
temporal water deficit increases, but also in areas without temporal 
water deficit increases.  ....  our results call for more studies to 
examine the impacts of recent climate changes on forest dynamics 
beyond those regions with temporal water deficit increases."

Yong Luo and Han Y. H. Chen. Climate change-associated tree mortality 
increases without decreasing water availability. Ecology Letters, 
(2015) doi: 10.1111/ele.12500
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Given their relatively young age and favorable competitive status in 
these forests, these sugar maples should be experiencing the best 
growth rates of their lives."

"The last few decades have brought warmer and wetter conditions to 
the Adirondacks, which are typically good for plant growth," said Dr. 
Colin Beier, an associate professor of ecology at ESF who supervised 
Bishop's thesis research. Meanwhile, there have been big strides in 
reducing acid rain, which is especially damaging to sugar maple.

"Given these changes, we would expect these trees to be thriving, but 
they are not."

Journal article here: (Open access)

Regional growth decline of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and its 
potential causes
Daniel A. Bishop, Colin M. Beier, Neil Pederson, Gregory B. Lawrence, 
John C. Stella, Timothy J. Sullivan
Ecosphere  Volume 6, Issue 10 (October 2015)
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/ES15-00260.1
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/ES15-00260.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A surprising result is the high proportion of species responding to 
recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6 
C)."

Camille Parmesan. "Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent 
Climate Change." Annual Review of Ecol. Evol. & Systematics  2006. 
37:637-69
























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