Firefighters have reported that Western wildfires are starting earlier in the morning and dying down later at night, hampering their ability to recover and regroup before the next day’s flareup. A study by University of Washington and U.S. Forest Service scientists shows why: The drying power of nighttime air over much of the Western U.S. has increased dramatically in the past 40 years.
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This week, a few members of the UW News team joined glaciologists from the UW Department of Earth & Space Sciences on a trip to Mt. Baker. Students that came along got a pop quiz on glaciology from their professor on the hike up, and learned about how the recent heat wave impacted the snow melt on the ice. Taryn Black, a PhD candidate in the department, led the hike and is featured in this video.
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Kyle Armour, associate professor of Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences, served as a lead author in the recently published United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Over the past three years, Armour collaborated with roughly 200 scientists all over the globe in an effort to come to a common understanding about the climate crisis and the steps needed to stabilize it.
Read more at The Seattle Times »
Exceptionally hot and dry weather this summer has fueled dozens of wildfires across the western U.S., spewing smoke across the country and threatening to register yet another record-breaking year. More than a century of fire exclusion has created dense forests packed with excess trees and brush that ignite and spread fires quickly under increasingly warm and dry conditions. Scientists largely agree that reducing these fuels is needed to make our forests and surrounding communities more resilient to wildfires and climate change.
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