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The Climate Connections of a Record Fire Year in the U.S. West
By Alan Buis,
NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Smoke from wildfires shrouded the San Francisco Bay Area and blocked sunlight on September 9, 2020. Credit: Aaron Maizlish/Flickr/CC BY 2.0
The year 2020 will be remembered for many things, not the least of which were a series of devastating fires around the globe that bear the fingerprints of climate change. From Australia and South America’s Amazon and Pantanal regions, to Siberia and the U.S. West, wildfires set new records and made news year-round.
It was an especially bad year for wildfires on the U.S. West Coast. Five of California’s 10 largest wildfires on record happened in 2020, and the state set a new record for acres burned. According to CAL FIRE, the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, more than 9,600 wildfires burned nearly 4.2 million acres through mid-December, causing more than 30 fatalities and damaging or destroying nearly 10,500 s