March 14, 2021
A new study shows that just a half a degree of global temperature rise markedly increases fire danger on the most widely inhabited continents.
Smoke from the Calwood wildfire billows over the mountains north of Boulder, Colorado, in October 2020. Image via Malachi Brooks/ Unsplash.
A 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degree-Fahrenheit) temperature rise might not seem very different from a 1.5 degree C (2.7 F) rise. But this half-degree difference is enough to cause a significant increase in the frequency and severity of wildfires. That’s according to an international team of scientists, who announced the results of their new study on March 10, 2021. They referred to the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which, as of February 2021, 191 nations are working to try to limit global temperature rise in this century to 2 degrees C, and, ideally, to 1.5 degrees C, over preindustrial levels. The scientists said that seemingly small half-a-degree temperature difference makes a big difference