Climate alarmists blame the active forest fire season in the western US on on global warming. They warn that warmer temperatures will lead to more wildfires. They do not mention the lack of forest fires in western Canada and Mexico. Climate change apparently stops at the border.
Warmer temperatures don’t necessarily lead to more drought and wild fires. The earth’s surface has often been drier during cooler times.Most people assume warmer temperatures “dry out” forest "fuel" faster. We use a hair dryer to dry our hair, and throw our wet laundry in the dryer.
Even climate professors misunderstand the fundamental science. They tell us warming may lead to lower air humidity and less precipitation, which increases the risk of wildfires. But then again, they also like to tell us that warming leads to more rainfall !
Relative humidity is the key! The one factor behind drying forest, grassland, ground surface is the relative humidity of the air next to the surface (difference temperature and dew point) and precipitation.
If the air has a very high relative humidity, then drying will take a long time, no matter what the temperature is. If temperature was the main factor behind the drying, then places like the Amazon, Congo or Southeast Asian rain forests would have dried up and burned long ago. They have not. The planet’s biggest deserts are the Arctic and Antarctic. much cooler than the Amazon.
Please ignore data in the following wildfire charts before 1950.
U.S. wildfire acres burned per year is distorted by many deliberate (prescribed) fires set during the Great Depression in the southeast states. Burning dead brush was a federal government job to keep formerly unemployed people busy doing something useful. So both charts are distorted before World War II kept young men even busier than their 'conservation' jobs.
