Louis professor of the foods are the 1st order of the year are you very true to ferrets for. Across the globe wildfires are raging at record levels the cause Scientists Say is the Global Climate crisis but how is the Climate Crisis contributing to these fires and how do we handle them once they start well joining us to discuss this in scotland Glen Mcdonald hes a geography professor at the university of california los angeles and an expert on the environmental consequences of Climate Change and connecticut carla staver shes a professor at Yale University who studies focus on the ecology of savannah and forest systems and here in the studio meals and hes a scientist at Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center where he studies fire trends across the globe welcome everyone. Good to have you im going to throw up that map again its from Global Forest watch its all about. All of the y. Files are happening right now if we have a look at this crane and and contemplate it it looks quite scary but are we going in a trend where were seeing more wildfires happening around the world. I think you have to you know you have to be careful with that you know there are areas where we certainly are. Western United States australia southern australia parts of the amazon there are others theres actually been a decrease in wildfire because weve cleared the land weve cleared the forest so we put it into. Land so its a net aggregate neil might want to comment on this theres actually been a kind of a global decrease in fire but thats not true for every place some places like western United States fire has ramped up this century and its fred thank you so much yeah and theyve actually what we see is that particularly in savannah ecosystems where most of central wildfires occur set received is really strong that klein and in wildfires of other 2525 percent annual over an area loss over just 20 years and it is really because if you think of to savannah fire its its only burning through the crust layer its not a very intense fire and if you start to fragment the landscape for example you turn turn it into a crop planter you start crazing its or you start to build roads you see actually that those fires const bred to the way they used to be able to spread so because of that we see those fires are actually very very fit to be disappearing from those ecosystems. Yet come back and i can i jump in there and i think an important piece of context for thinking especially about this that and. Is the fact that there are a lot of ecosystems on earth but burned historically even before people started burning and so we tend to think a lot about how humans are implicated in wild fires but systems like savannahs were burning before people ever got there and thats also true of systems like mediterranean type chaparral in california these are naturally fire prone ecosystems and so certainly humans can have the impact of increasing fire activity but in some of these places where fires are. A natural part of their ecology. Player actually has decreased their human activity. So we mention the savannah and for not americans were not necessarily talking about the south the u. S. Were talking about in some parts the continent of africa so i want to bring our attention to this tweet we got from francisco who says recent wildfires have focused attention on the amazon rain forest in brazil but western africa is another major trouble spot ivory coast has lost 80 percent of its 4 is so over the past 50 years and gone trees have been chopped down across an area the size of new jersey and he goes on to show this share this picture thats from originally from the Washington Post i want to give this one to you because he mentions these facts here but are they cause for concern or is this part of a cycle thats natural. Im so we actually this is actually a question that we have worked on in my group so it certainly in west africa about this because apparently accurate so somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of course thats been lost theres not a lot of wet forest left on with africa thats not true when it comes to africa and so there is actually the congo rain forest is not entirely but relatively intact compared to some other horse. But when were talking about deportation with africa were not talking about an october of thats right thats but its intensive human modification of about ecosystem and thats that theyre right on i guess its important to explain that. During the de forestation prose as fire is very widely used so thats both in the amazon but also in this in africa for example what happens often is that the forests are cleared and then theres a lot of material that people just simply want to get rid of before it can use the rain for agriculture for its own so fire is very widely used. So these are not natural fires those are manmade finally and its very important to separate those from the natural fires that may burn just a few could moments is further down the road in western africa for example in savannah if your system. What do you want to add to it. Ive got pictures here that you showed us and you talked about weston california bang and the west coast of the u. S. Being one of the as weve seen an increase and wildfires im going to show these pictures you can just talk us through where you are in relation to these pictures. First i want to say that my son took those pictures and theyre oh its mcdonald theyre very close to our home and and this is becoming an annual deja vu deja vu last year you know about this time of year we were evacuated from our house because it was in danger of burning down this year we have 2 or 3 fires parked up close enough to see them with this kind of you know a terrible beauty in a sense and all of a sudden you know california is considered paradise but all of a sudden people who are living in suburbs are living on the edge theyre wondering well is this fall this early winter going to be the winner 10 years ago that was in the case but weve see an inventor or a santa rosa up in reading these fires you know burning out of the exurban cringe right into the sort of suburban area series which you developed for instance in the ninetys and we would think you know just a normal suburb i was just bring it home and i have to show this picture hey this is from they want to break and library in simi valley im just going to place play inside the lively look at the windows were just coming up to the windows here and this was threatened by wildfire just recently look out of the window as and there you can see you can see the smoke the haze you can see the fire have really actually outside the window is part of the problem and im just wondering are we just building in areas that are wild fire prone and we shouldnt really be living there any way yes. Well thats. Thats a good point in california there are certain areas some of the canyons going over to malibu the santa paula area the Santa Clara RiverVentura River corridor or area near paradise there theyre basically when channels there are areas where we get these very high velocity strong winds in the fall and early winter and some of these areas now burn 2 or 3 times since the beginning of this century there are areas that because of their fuel and their local climate are just going to be dangerous and the Reagan Library sits right on the edge of one of those my house is really a stones throw away from that library. And god did you when you got your house you knew he was somebody that was potentially very dangerous and that didnt change your mind about when you want to tell the truth and its beautiful that by the way here i want to tell you something when we would we moved into that area we did not think it was potentially dangerous we made sure that we bought a house far away from any of the sort of natural fire fuels this chaparral or coastal sage cover grassland were in the middle of a kind of us suburban area we did not think when we purchased the houses many people didnt think well you know were not near those hills were not mixed in with the chaparral but the fact is these fires now are spreading into the urban in the suburban fabric. Yeah i think. You know one of the interesting things for example is is if you just think about for example how people will start to feel it is and downs historically like if you think of south in europe where you have these small villages all the houses back together and then the fields around there and then the forests that were kind of man its just a you know by the community you know you can see how historically people really took that into mind you know it was. These processes and i think you know like theres definitely been i guess because of you know our capability to fight fires has improved so much you know there is an expansion of all of urban areas into regions that maybe where maybe we shouldnt have built and now especially you know like since things are changing you know people really start to realize like wow yeah. So who better at managing fine as before than we all right now well i wouldnt i wouldnt but particularly for example in the western us really the nature of the fires has really changed im glad that you mentioned the Historic Deal when this in part here youre trying to get in so ill give this to you i wanted to share a couple tweets from dr crystal cold and who says saying people shouldnt live in these areas is not a real solution Indigenous People live to the fire in these places and so can we in the 21st century im not sure where the 10000000. 00 plus people that live in fire prone areas would go and it fails to acknowledge vulnerable populations but she goes on to say this landscape was burned for centuries by the indigenous inhabitants to produce grass and brush and support cultural foods and plants Indigenous People not only lived with fire they use it as a tool to survive and support their culture we have much to learn about this carla whats your take on what we have to learn and what we seem to be doing wrong well and i think you know we sort of you open the program talking about the incidence of wildfire globally we spoke a little bit about systems where there is less than a little bit about the slums where there is where i think and the real point of concern is that theres been an increase in the incidence of extreme fires which threaten human why lives and life. And and so the question breath of science this is where the points of leverage in that system are right and so meals have sort of alluded to the idea we sort of you know i think the technical term would be a wild winter but. So these areas that are really at the interface of flammable wild lands and then where people live as being particularly at risk areas and theres a lot of discussion around how we would manage those areas to be you last vulnerable to these fire extremes but theres also a couple of other i think you know crystals tweeks i know crystals were i dont know crystal personally but i do know her do you know her work and she was talking. Shes referring to the idea that we can somehow manage fuels. To make fires less extreme so that something that is somewhat controversial idea has been around for a long time and its certainly a good option in some context and the last thing that i think we should probably talk about more explicitly is the idea that Global Change the warming is resulting in an increase in the incidence of weather that leads to extreme fires rants of the world is hotter than it used to be and the fact that its hotter means that fires have the ability to get much more extreme than they used to and so those are the 3 major sort of like where we build and how we and how we build. How we manage fuels and and finally Climate Change with the you know whats up if the top problem but those are about major points of leverage that we think about us scientists when we think about how we are impacting fire regimes globally. And im just yet you can eat affect and im just wondering how as as Different Countries around the world we are managing this this Climate Change in terms of the impacts of the wildfires and they still with my staff they connected think you confess in your phone well that was it im good carla brought that up and if we take a look at the california western United States i mean theres no question that there is d a clear relationship between Climate Change particularly over the last 2 decades or so and increased frequency of fires and increased acreage of fires and theres been a lot of analysis on this were seeing that those hotter conditions are creating basically during the summer very very dry air very low humidity very high temperatures which is exacerbating the fire behavior were also seeing that the fire season is getting longer our winters are getting shorter you know we have a longer autumn california which is drawing and our spring dries faster and so the fire season is length. And there is a relationship between those 2 things these temperatures and the length of the fire season and the increase were seeing in the west in california you can find the same thing in southern australia so theres theres a smoking gun here theres a fingerprint of Climate Change here and we cant we cant ignore it. And now i guess you know like the discussion has now really focused on the west and us so much for it is research is showing the importance of course but when we think about more of a global picture you know for example. In the tropics a situation that is so different i would think for example the most important. Effect on society in most of the tropics is probably the effect on air quality not so much like the entire traffic. You know structures i think a good example is for example the Current Situation in. Now where where you have that situation where you know you already have one half of the polluted city and then in proximity you have all that agricultural burning and when that does plumes come over. Thats really makes and makes the situation liveable basically so its really i think like a low is really such a. Different situation basically so i think that another of the really important point about sort of these air quality issues in the tropics. So another. The amazon fires i think there were some really i one of the reasons that we started paying so much attention is that there were some really impactful photos of sao paolo in the middle of the amazon fires happening and not just air quality and the quantities of smog that were coming up with the forestation fires which was really a process of the other really mind blowing stats from sort from the indonesia people so that indonesian peak forest fires from 2015 generated so much smoke that theyre estimated to have there was a study came out that suggests that they are estimated to have shortened the life spans of over 100000 people and so were really not talking about. Were not talking about mild impact on air quality it really is i mean i actually personally i think it can also be the case in california as well im not from out west but i was in oregon a couple of years ago when there were some fires burning in the vicinity and you could feel it really impacts it really impacts your ability to go outside and to breach. Right yeah and you know because the interesting thing for example about the 4 station fires you know is that. Its its a human driven. Means so. We have more control of things as well because its human driven and as were talking about global wildfires here within a Global Community i want to bring up this comment we just got live on you tube from elizabeth who says what can we do individually and what can me make our governments do to cut down on the number of fires like these so keep that in mind dont answer yet because i want to bring in a video commenter who gives an idea of what could be done to mitigate a few of these fires this is Craig Clemons the director of Fire Weather Research laboratory in california and heres what he told the story. I think theres a number of things that can be done to help mitigate the risk of wildfire throughout the world one thing is limiting development in areas where world powers occur. We have lots of expansion into the wild land in the forests and such so limiting Development Housing in these areas would be a good way to mitigate risk another way to mitigate part wildland fire risk is to the remove the fuels especially around urban areas and the neighborhoods that are at risk another thing thats more important in what weve seen in the western u. S. Is improving power utility infrastructure for example that could limit ignition by down power lines so improving the infrastructure of utilities is important. Well ill pass that went on to you because you mentioned several important things there what stuck out to you with most important you know i think one of the things thats really important to understand in california is that we have just the right weather to have big fires in the autumn we have the strong you have sent ana winds weve had a long summer of drawing and then we have a lot of people who are ignition sources 97 percent and 99 percent of the fires wildland fires in california are human ignite it right and the problem is and not in fires a Natural Force in most effective systems but the problem is that with for instance power lines they tend to fail when we have the highest winds and the greatest potential to spread the fire and so trying to get out at these you know at our Power Infrastructure is an important port and part of this were going to have fires but there are certain times we absolutely do not want them to want them to ignite and right now we are vulnerable because of our infrastructure miss can i show you something this is what i feel coming he had the International Space station his name is andrea morgan. So took some pictures out of the window if hes off base it is the International Space station we just show you a couple of these pictures here which are remarkable which is all the way from the International Space station being out see what hes budding down one of what is it that nasa is able to do to help us i know that you are studying. The while fison fires around the well how youll study its helping us well i think in several ways one of the things i just mentioned for example were basically issues related to air cooling so for example a reason thing we may have been working on this developing and improved global Fire Missions that are based in near real time so we produce emissions estimates in near real time and these feed then into atmospheric models basically that helps you to predict air quality issues or to understand what the contributions are from for example lets say again in delhi or in singapore you have a lot of local sources of pollution and to disentangle to understand the different contributions from wildfires or from garz for example is very important if you want to do something about it but its another thing for example thats really interesting in a very focused on for example for the amazon basin is actually really find that throughout most of the tropics. That weather is quite often very predictable because its related to the large scale systems driven by the ocean currents and we can see that from the sea surface temperatures so what we see for example during el nino saw the no solution when the seas are just temperatures in the pacific are very high we see for example across the amazon basin we have shortages in rain and that so what we can observe the sea surface temperatures by satellite and then this shortage just seemed very you know current. In the winter season and its only a few months later that the fires occurrences and you can is basically what youre doing is giving areas a heads up right that they could have a quite severe wildfire season and you know this ahead of time because what youre able to look at from the from the weather systems kind of go it yeah its about im going i want to also touch on a little bit of that theres been theres a lot of talk about Tree Planting as a potential. As a potential thing that we can do to mitigate. Carbon emissions globally. And i also want to sort of emphasize that that there are some examples of places where that that can actually be a very bad idea and that interacts in dangerous ways with fire risk so i dont know if you would remember that there was a couple years ago there were fires in portugal that made the news and anyway oh yeah and then really resulted in the burning of a lot of homes and some death most of all and a lot of those some of those fires occurred in places where trees had been planted in planted eucalypt and plantations. And so one other thing that you can do on a very local level d is to be very careful about where youre planting trees and what kind of trees youre planting and so eucalyptus and pine in particular examples of trees you see that tend to be quite claimable. And so to be careful about planting species like those in areas that are fire prone im so this also gets back to the idea of. Trying to manage what and you know how much of education there is actually to burn. And you know and making sure that were basically not adding to the of out of vegetation that they are suburban create severe fires by planting trees and places where that inappropriate and again thats portuguese fires are an example of a place where that was really catastrophic am actually was a human you know that was human planted forests that burned and resulted in real the last are there so i want to give one last word to our community on what people watching can do if this happens to them this is krista why shes a ph d. Student in california heres what she told the street. Growing up in california ive always been aware of wildland fires and the dangers they pose to humans and the landscape here in this state its been heartbreaking to watch the number of large events that weve had this past week in the past few years and the advice that i can share is that Everyone Needs to be prepared are ready for wildfire that work is that really great resource that helps citizens prepare for the event of a walk on fire get ready to go with tips for getting go back building and just always make sure that you Pay Attention to local 1st responders and news organizations so that you evacuate as soon as you need to know. Thanks to christa and to our guests for this conversation of course those of you online thanks for joining us until next time well see online. 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