<ul class="summary-list"><li><strong><a href="https://www.insider.com/lytton-british-columbia-engulfed-in-flames-following-temps-over-121-degrees-2021-7">Wildfires in western Canada</a> are producing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/australia-bushfires-generate-pyrocumulonimbus-thunderstorm-clouds-2019-12?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">pyrocumulonimbus storm clouds</a>.</strong></li><li><strong>Dubbed the "fire-breathing dragon of <keyword id="49873" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="clouds">clouds</keyword>," these clouds can generate tornadoes and lightning that may cause more <keyword id="42704" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="fires">fires</keyword>.</strong></li></ul><p>Record heat and growing <keyword id="394841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="wildfires">wildfires</keyword> are creating firestorms that can generate their own lightning in the skies above British Columbia, Canada. </p><p>As heat and smoke from large fires rise skyward, they can create firestorms comprised of what are known as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/australia-bushfires-generate-pyrocumulonimbus-thunderstorm-clouds-2019-12?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">pyrocumulonimbus clouds</a>. These thunderheads produce their own weather, including tornadoes in rare cases, which can then spark new fires. It's a vicious cycle.</p><p>Temperatures in Lytton, 95 miles south of Vancouver, hit <a href="https://www.insider.com/lytton-british-columbia-engulfed-in-flames-following-temps-over-121-degrees-2021-7">121.2 degrees Fahrenheit</a> (50 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday - a new national record. The heat wave preceded a wildfire that prompted the town's mayor to issue an evacuation order for all 250 residents. As of Thursday morning, the 20,000-acre blaze had burned 90% of Lytton, <a href="https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/07/01/lytton-wildfire-wind-heat/">according to local outlet City News</a>. </p><div type="image" title="fire in lytton british columbia" height="1170" width="1768" msid="84052903" hostid="261"></div><p>The British Columbia wildfire service reported <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lytton-wildfire-british-columbia-evacuations/">two more fires</a> in the province on Wednesday.</p><p>Dakota Smith, a meteorologist from Colorado's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, <a href="https://twitter.com/weatherdak/status/1410429592213413889?s=20">reported seeing</a> "incredible &amp; massive storm-producing pyrocumulonimbus plumes" on satellite images above Lytton Wednesday.</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet blockquote" data-lang="en" data-cards="" data-conversation="">-Rob Mayeda  (@RobMayeda) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1410433029357465601?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 1, 2021</a></blockquote><h2>'Fire-breathing dragon of clouds'</h2><p>If you spot a bank of thick-looking thunderstorm clouds above wildfire smoke, those are almost always pyrocumulonimbus. Another name for these "fire clouds," according to NASA, is cumulonimbus flammagenitus - the second word is Latin for "created from flame."</p><div type="image" title="Pyrocumulonimbus satellite image" height="538" width="1076" msid="84052904" hostid="261"></div><p>In general, thunderstorms form when lots of warm, moist air from the ground rise into the sky. As it enters the lowest part of the atmosphere, that air cools, and then sinks closer to Earth - where it warms up again, and subsequently rises. That cycle of rising and falling air is known as convection, and births cumulonimbus, or thunder, clouds. </p><p>But when that heat and moisture rise from a smoky wildfire rather than the ground, the convection creates pyrocumulonimbus clouds. </p><div type="image" title="fire" height="914" width="1200" msid="84052905" hostid="261"></div><p>These anvil-shaped clouds can generate rain like other thunderstorms. Often, though, they unleash powerful, blasts of air known as "downbursts," rather than water droplets. In pushing dry air back down toward the ground, these downbursts can scatter a blaze's embers and smoke across large distances. That fuels the flames that generated the storm in the first place. </p><p><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/pyrocb.html">NASA describes</a> pyrocumulonimbus storms as the "fire-breathing dragon of clouds." They can also generate hundreds of lightning strokes, which in turn can spark more blazes.</p><p>In September 2020, the Creek Fire in California created one of the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/californias-creek-fire-creates-its-own-pyrocumulonimbus-cloud">largest types of these clouds</a> ever seen in the US - It measured <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-fire-breathing-dragon-of-clouds-15557949.php#:~:text=The%20Creek%20Fire%20pyrocumulonimbus%20formed,is%20not%20expected%20until%20October.">175,893 acres</a>, or 275 square miles, in size (an area more than three times the size of Seattle).</p><div type="image" title="pyrocumulonimbus.2" height="1560" width="1536" msid="84052906" hostid="261"></div><p>Sometimes, if the convecting air in a pyrocumulonimbus cloud bank forms a swirling, circular column, the storm can morph into a "<a href="https://theconversation.com/turn-and-burn-the-strange-world-of-fire-tornadoes-11193">fire tornado</a>" - a twister of fire.</p><p>This happened outside Canberra, Australia in 2003, after a bushfire burned for two weeks around the city. </p><p>Fires can generate more than one firestorm. In February and March 2009, enormous bushfires burned 1,700 square miles of southeastern Australia, and generated three separate <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017JD026577">pyrocumulonimbus storms</a> - some of which reached heights of 9 miles - in the skies above Victoria.</p><h2><keyword id="6361617" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="climate-change">Climate change</keyword> could play a role</h2><div type="image" title="pyrocumulonimbus clouds above australia 2019" height="3267" width="4356" msid="84052907" hostid="261"></div><p>Rising temperatures and drier air are associated with more frequent and more intense wildfires. And as wildfires increase in size and severity, fire-generated storms, too, are becoming more common.</p><p>In 2002, Canada, the US, and Mexico saw about <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/pyrocb.html">17 such storms</a> in total. About two decades later, the average number of annual pyrocumulonimbus events had jumped to 25 in western North America alone, <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/fire-induced-storms-a-new-danger-from-the-rise-in-wildfires">Yale360 reported</a>. </p><div type="image" title="pyrocumulonimbus cloud" height="2634" width="3513" msid="84052908" hostid="261"></div><p>These storms can extend so high that they penetrate the stratosphere - a layer of the atmosphere that starts 31 miles up - and funnel smoke from the ground into the sky. It can stay up there for months or even years at a time.</p><p>A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-018-0039-3">2018 study</a> found that a large pyrocumulonimbus cloud sends so many smoke particles into the stratosphere that it's comparable to a mid-sized volcanic eruption. </p>

Wildfires and record temperatures in Canada are generating 'fire-breathing' pyrocumulonimbus thunderstorms

<ul class="summary-list"><li>As <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/recording-breaking-weather-linked-to-climate-change-2019-11#the-year-began-with-a-record-shattering-polar-vortex-that-engulfed-the-us-midwest-and-eastern-canada-killing-at-least-21-people-3">climate change</a> makes wildfires larger and hotter, <keyword id="9945248" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="pyrocumulonimbus">pyrocumulonimbus</keyword> clouds – a type of cloud generated from major fires – are becoming more common.</li><li>These clouds can become so intense, they generate their own <keyword id="6359992" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="weather">weather</keyword>, including smoky rain, lightning, and <a href="https://www.insider.com/rare-firenado-weather-northern-california-nevada-border-2020-8">firenadoes</a>.</li></ul><p>As Thalia Dockery's flight to Las Vegas passed over central <keyword id="2379" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="California">California</keyword> on September 5, the passengers caught an ominous view out their windows: A huge, grey cloud mushroomed thousands of feet into the sky.</p><p>It looked like the product of an atomic explosion or volcanic eruption. But what they'd spotted was a <a href="https://www.insider.com/rare-firenado-weather-northern-california-nevada-border-2020-8">pyrocumulonimbus cloud</a> — an enormous plume of hot, smoky air that had risen from a <keyword id="41285" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Wildfire">wildfire</keyword>, then turned into a thundercloud in Earth's atmosphere. </p><p>"I just so happened to look out my window in shock," Dockery, who took the photo above, told Insider. "I had no idea that it was from a fire until I came home and my son and I researched it."</p><p>The particular pyrocumulonimbus cloud she saw came from the Creek Fire, which has burned 212,000 acres in Fresno and Madera counties since it started on September 4. That cloud rose to a dizzying 55,000 feet, which might make it the highest pyrocumulonimbus cloud ever recorded in the US. </p><p>"It's about a solid 10,000 feet higher than we're typically seeing with the highest of these plumes," Neil Lareau, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Nevada at Reno, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/12/california-wildfires-smoke-plumes/">told The Washington Post</a>.</p><p>Once rare, pyrocumulonimbus clouds are becoming more common in regions like California and Australia as climate change causes larger, hotter, more frequent wildfires. These clouds, which <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/pyrocb.html">NASA has dubbed</a> "the fire-breathing dragon of clouds," can grow so intense that they make their own weather. Sometimes, that weather can contribute to still more fires in a dangerous feedback loop. </p><h2><strong>How a pyrocumulonimbus forms</strong></h2><p>Pyrocumulonimbus clouds are a subset of pyrocumulus, or fire cloud. They form when big fires cause an upward movement of hot air containing ash and smoke, which can interact with water vapor in the atmosphere above.</p><p>Ordinary pyrocumulus clouds aren't especially dangerous and don't affect fires at ground level. But when blazes get big enough – and if there's enough moisture in the air – condensation keeps the air inside the cloud warmer than the air outside of it. That then allows the pyrocumulus cloud to rise higher and higher. Once it reaches altitudes where the temperature is below freezing, raindrops and lightning can begin to form – causing the cloud to become a pyrocumulonimbus. </p><div type="image" title="pyrocumulus cloud" height="338" width="600" msid="78135578" hostid="261"></div><p>In some cases, smoky rain produced by a pyrocumulonimbus cloud can help extinguish a fire, but unfortunately for Californians, these clouds don't normally produce much rain in the state. In dry environments, any rain produced by the clouds evaporates before it reaches the ground. </p><p>The clouds' lightning can hit the ground, however – and when it does, it can ignite additional wildfires or feed existing ones. Intense winds within a pyrocumulonimbus cloud can also scatter embers, which can ignite fires in new areas or strengthen blazes that are already burning. </p><div type="image" title="creekfire" height="317" width="600" msid="78135580" hostid="261"></div><p>In rare cases, the winds from pyrocumulonimbus clouds even form fire-induced tornadoes, or "firenadoes." That happens when rising air from a fire gets twisted by wind, becoming a swirling vortex detached from the ground. </p><p>Firenadoes are hot, unpredictable, and dangerous: In 2018, a <keyword id="6536154" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="tornado">tornado</keyword> associated with the Carr Fire, which had wind speeds of up to 143 mph, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/08/16/california-fire-tornado-warning/">killed a firefighter</a>.</p><h2>Climate change makes these clouds more common</h2><p>Large pyrocumulonimbus clouds – the type capable of generating their own weather – used to be rare. But they've become more common in recent years. In December and January, wildfires in Australia produced an unusually high number of pyrocumulonimbus clouds, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-animates-world-path-of-smoke-and-aerosols-from-australian-fires">according to NASA</a>.</p><p>The largest pyrocumulonimbus events ever recorded worldwide have all occurred in the past three years, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-fire-breathing-dragon-of-clouds-15557949.php">according to the San Francisco Chronicle</a>.</p><p>That's because large, hot fires are more likely to produce pyrocumulonimbus clouds, and climate change leads to bigger and more intense wildfires.</p><p>As temperatures rise, more water evaporates from soil, drying out land. Snow also melts sooner, and spring arrives earlier. In 2017, for instance, spring (defined as the arrival of growing season for certain widespread plants) arrived 22 days <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-02/ugs-jhe022317.php?utm_source=Climate+News+Network&amp;utm_campaign=9dc2db9618-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_01&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_1198ea8936-9dc2db9618-38766337618-38766337">earlier than usual in Washington, DC</a>. Early snow melt and high temperatures deprive vegetation of water, drying it out in time for wildfire season.</p><div type="image" title="07_sonoma vineyards_dry creek and quivira vineyards_lnu lightning complex wildfire_healdsburg california_20august2020_wv3 natural color image" height="5700" width="8969" msid="78135588" hostid="261"></div><p>In California, which has seen <a href="https://www.insider.com/california-fires-biggest-in-history-august-complex-fire-2020-9">its 10 largest wildfires</a> in the last 20 years, the average temperature during wildfire season has increased by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1980s, according to <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2020/04/02/increasing-risk-extreme-wildfire-weather/">a recent Stanford analysis</a>. The length of the state's wildfire season has increased by 75 days since the early 2000s, and a 2015 study found that <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GL064924">rising temperatures have</a> made extreme droughts in California significantly more likely.</p><p>In the US overall, the top five years with most acreage burned due to wildfires have all occurred since 2005, <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf">according to the Congressional Research Service</a>. The country's average temperature has <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-american-warming-us-heats-up-earth-day">risen by</a> 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970.</p><h2>Pyrocumulonimbus clouds can contribute to climate change themselves </h2><div type="image" title="pyroc.2" height="1038" width="2048" msid="78135613" hostid="261"></div><p>A pyrocumulonimbus cloud can pump smoke — which contains carbon dioxide as well as toxic compounds like carbon monoxide and harmful fine particulates — into the atmosphere.</p><p>"It acts like a giant chimney, taking smoke from the ground and injecting it to the altitude of a jet aircraft," David Peterson, a meteorologist with the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-fire-breathing-dragon-of-clouds-15557949.php">told the San Francisco Chronicle</a>. </p><p>If a pyrocumulonimbus cloud gets tall enough, it can even affect the ozone layer, a protective shield around the Earth that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. Researchers have also found that some wildfire smoke <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160125160348.htm#:~:text=Ozone%20chemistry's%20nonlinearity&amp;text=In%20the%20past%2C%20some%20individually,influenced%20by%20many%20fleeting%20factors.ors.">may increase ozone levels below the ozone layer</a>, which can have a greenhouse effect and damage lungs and crops.</p>

California's fires are so intense, some make their own thunderstorms. NASA calls the formations the 'fire-breathing dragon of clouds.'

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fossils-reveal-ecology-of-australia-prehistoric-rainforest-2022-1">Australian</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/australia-wildfires-space-satellite-pictures-smoke-new-zealand-2020-1">wildfires</a> in 2019 and 2020 made <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oregon-bootleg-fire-creating-fire-clouds-pyrocumulonimbus-storms-2021-7">thunderstorms</a> that funneled <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/study-wildfire-smoke-linked-to-excess-covid-19-cases-deaths-2021-8">smoke</a> into the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/stratosphere-shrinking-greenhouse-gas-emissions-climate-change-2021-5">stratosphere</a>.</li><li>Two new studies suggest that the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wildfire-smoke-clouds-travel-world-harm-health-2021-8">smoke</a> depleted <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-refrigerators-are-so-hard-to-recycle-greenhouse-gases-2021-8">ozone</a>, which protects Earth from harmful radiation.</li></ul><p>Wildfire <keyword id="11898862" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="smoke" source="Orion">smoke</keyword> may slow progress on one of the most widely hailed climate success stories: healing the <keyword id="13440849" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ozone" source="Orion">ozone</keyword> layer.</p><p>In the 1980s, researchers discovered that a class of household chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were eating a hole in the ozone layer, which protects Earth from cancer-causing radiation. A 10% decrease in ozone levels would result in an additional 300,000 skin-cancer cases worldwide, according to a World Health Organization <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/radiation-ultraviolet-(uv)-radiation-and-skin-cancer">estimate</a>.</p><p>World governments banded together to phase CFCs out of household products, like refrigerators and hairspray, when they signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987. CFC emissions fell, and the ozone hole over the Antarctic began to close. Now the ozone layer is on track to fully recover by 2060, according to a <a href="https://csl.noaa.gov/assessments/ozone/2018/executivesummary/">scientific assessment</a> from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Association.</p><p>But an unexpected new threat — wildfire smoke — might slow that recovery, a pair of recent studies suggest. Researchers discovered that <keyword id="11897977" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="australia" source="Orion">Australia</keyword>'s "Black Summer" <keyword id="11898861" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="wildfires" source="Orion">wildfires</keyword> in late 2019 and early 2020 created a cloud of smoke so large that it rose into the <keyword id="13440850" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="stratosphere" source="Orion">stratosphere</keyword>, circled the southern hemisphere, and triggered a chain of chemical reactions that destroyed ozone.</p><div type="image" title="earth australia brush fires smoke new zealand himawari 8 satellite image photo january 2 2020 full_disk_ahi_true_color_20200102022000 4x3 2" height="1500" width="2000" msid="90383949" hostid="261"></div><p>"Smoke was not supposed to do this," Peter Bernath, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Waterloo, who co-authored one of the studies and led the other, told Insider. "It was completely unexpected that smoke made these atmospheric changes. So this is new chemistry."</p><p>The smoke was associated with a 1% decrease in ozone at southern midlatitudes in March 2020, according to calculations in one of the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2117325119">studies</a>, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. One percent may sound small, but it's significant, considering the ozone layer is rebuilding itself by <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1046452">about 1-3% every decade</a>.</p><p>The second <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm5611">study</a> found that the smoke led to a rise in compounds, like hypochlorous acid, which react with ozone molecules to break them apart. Researchers aren't sure how the smoke causes an increase in these reactive compounds, but they are confident that this is what caused the ozone levels to dip in March 2020. That paper was published in the journal <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">Science</keyword> on Thursday.</p><div type="image" title="Nancy Allen and Brian Allen stand outside the house as high winds push smoke and ash from the Currowan Fire towards Nowra, New South Wales, Australia January 4, 2020. REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy" height="2000" width="2666" msid="90383950" hostid="261"></div><p>Within about nine months, the smoke had cleared from the stratosphere, and ozone had recovered to pre-wildfire levels. But the researchers suspect that other major wildfire events, like the 2017 and 2020 blazes across the Pacific Northwest, could have a similar ozone-depleting effect.</p><p>Smoke probably won't undo the ozone layer's healing, Bernath said, but it could slow it down. In recent global <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/4/2021/07/05_Chapter-2-V6.pdf">climate</a> and <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires">wildfire</a> reports, the United Nations warned that fires will become more frequent and more severe as global temperatures rise. That could mean more enormous smoke clouds that reach into the stratosphere and destroy ozone.</p><p>"As severe wildfires increase in number, they will play an increasingly important role in the global ozone budget," Bernath's study concludes.</p><h2>Australia had the first 'super outbreak' of fire-driven thunderstorms</h2><div type="image" title="bootleg fire oregon pyrocumulonimbus clouds" height="1332" width="1779" msid="90383951" hostid="261"></div><p>When wildfires burn hot enough, under the right conditions, their smoke creates its own weather. It billows up into anvil-shaped thunderstorms called pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or "pyroCbs" for short.</p><p>Smoke cools and expands as it quickly rises miles high, allowing water vapor to condense on the ash particles and create a cloud sitting atop the smoke column. The fires below fuel hot updrafts that sustain the thunderstorm and funnel smoke into the upper <keyword id="12896459" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="atmosphere" source="Orion">atmosphere</keyword>, like a chimney.</p><div type="image" title="australia bushfire smoke cloud fills the sky above green mountain ridge" height="1283" width="1711" msid="90383952" hostid="261"></div><p>That's what happened above Australia in the final months of 2019 and beginning of 2020. As fires consumed about 50 million acres of land, they created about 38 pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which persisted for days.</p><p>More than half of those clouds reached the stratosphere, according to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-021-00192-9#:~:text=The%20Black%20Summer%20fire%20season,known%20as%20pyrocumulonimbus%20(pyroCb).">research</a> led by David Peterson, a meteorologist who studies pyrocumulonimbus clouds at the Naval Research Laboratory.</p><p>"That's why we refer to it as the first pyroCb super outbreak," Peterson, who is not affiliated with the new studies on ozone, told Insider.</p><h2>It's unclear how often fires will shoot ozone-destroying smoke into the stratosphere</h2><div type="image" title="wildfire smoke trails above forests mountains in canada seen from space" height="1666" width="2222" msid="90383953" hostid="261"></div><p>Pyrocumulonimbus clouds that reach into the stratosphere could become more common as the climate warms, but for now, that's hard to forecast.</p><p>"It's not just the fire. You need a certain atmospheric condition that allows for the thunderstorm to develop," Peterson said, adding, "Just because you have more wildfires doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more pyroCbs. It's really, how often do you have this synergy of the weather and the fire at the same time?"</p><p>That's an area of ongoing research — a "frontier topic," in Peterson's words. Nobody knows the future of wildfire-smoke storms and their ozone-destroying potential.</p><div type="image" title="copernicus sentinel 2 satellite image photo picture australia brush fires bateman bay twitter ENIPX2YWoAE9BaH" height="1411" width="1882" msid="90383954" hostid="261"></div><p>Bernath and his colleagues aren't even sure how wildfire smoke leads to compounds that react with ozone. They think that the hydrated, acidic surface of the smoke particles triggers chemical reactions that wouldn't otherwise take place in the stratosphere, creating new compounds.</p><p>"The smoke particles have a reactive surface, and that surface catalyzes this chemistry that destroys the ozone," Bernath said, adding, "So we kind of know what the smoke is doing. And we have some clue what the surface of the smoke particles looks like. But we don't actually know what particular reactions are taking place on the surface."</p><p>Laboratory research that inserts smoke particles into a stratosphere-like environment, and documents ensuing chemical reactions, could fill in the blanks.</p><p>Bernath and his colleagues are also studying satellite data from the fires that engulfed the West Coast of the US and Canada in 2020. Those blazes created pyrocumulonimbus clouds, and Bernath suspects that smoke had its own effect on ozone levels.</p><p>"This field of research into pyroCbs and their effects is relatively new, especially compared to other types of wildfire impacts," Peterson said, adding, "We learn a lot, but then we get a lot of new questions."</p>

The ozone hole is set to heal by 2060 — a rare climate success story — but wildfires could slow its progress

<ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>The Bootleg <keyword id="28762" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="fire">Fire</keyword> in <keyword id="94113" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Oregon">Oregon</keyword> is so big it's generating fire <keyword id="49873" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="clouds">clouds</keyword> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/canada-wildfire-heat-generating-pyrocumulonimbus-storm-clouds-2021-7">pyrocumulonimbus storms</a>.</strong></li><li><strong>Fire clouds can reach up to 6 miles high; people can spot them from more than 100 miles away.</strong></li><li><strong>Pyrocumulonimbus clouds can generate <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/australia-bushfires-generate-pyrocumulonimbus-thunderstorm-clouds-2019-12">fire tornadoes and lightning</a> that may spark more blazes.</strong></li></ul><p>Rising temperatures and a growing wildfire are creating dangerous fire clouds and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/canada-wildfire-heat-generating-pyrocumulonimbus-storm-clouds-2021-7">firestorms</a> that can generate their own lightning in the skies above southern Oregon.</p><p>The Bootleg Fire, the largest blaze currently burning in the US, has torched more than 388,000 acres (606 square-miles) since it started July 6 in Klamath County. It's only <a href="https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7609/">30% contained</a> as of Tuesday.</p><p>As heat and smoke from large fires rise skyward, they can create storms comprised of what are known as <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/australia-bushfires-generate-pyrocumulonimbus-thunderstorm-clouds-2019-12?r=US&amp;IR=TIR=T">pyrocumulonimbus clouds</a>. These thunderheads produce their own <keyword id="6359992" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="weather">weather</keyword>, including tornadoes in rare cases, which can then spark new fires. It's a vicious cycle.</p><p>The Oregonian blaze is also creating pyrocumulus, or flammagenitus, clouds - the second word is Latin for "created from flame."</p><p>These fire clouds consist of up to 6-mile-high columns of smoke and ash that are visible from more than 100 miles away. The Bootleg Fire has generated multiple pyrocumulus clouds of this size for the last four days in a row, the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-fires-environment-and-nature-oregon-wildfires-3255d07c698462a9221c090f212ac98e">reported Friday</a>.</p><div type="image" title="Bootleg fire satellite image July 18 2021 from NASA" height="1980" width="2640" msid="84591725" hostid="261"></div><p>"The fire is so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it's changing the weather," Marcus Kauffman, a spokesman for the Oregon forestry department, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/climate/bootleg-wildfire-weather.html?action=click&amp;module=Top%20Stories&amp;pgtype=HomepageHomepage">told The New York Times</a> Monday. "Normally the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do."</p><p>Authorities said the clouds form between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. local time everyday, as heat from the baking ground rises skyward.</p><h2>'Fire-breathing dragon of clouds'</h2><div type="image" title="bootleg fire oregon clouds" height="1333" width="2000" msid="84490517" hostid="261"></div><p>"Pyrocumulus clouds above active fires, especially large fires, are relatively common," Nick Nauslar from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-19/what-are-pyrocumulus-clouds-california-wildfire-analysis">told the Los Angeles Times</a>.</p><p>But if you spot a bank of thicker, taller thunderheads looming over an intense wildfire, those are almost always pyrocumulonimbus clouds, Nauslar said.</p><p><a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/pyrocb.html">NASA describes</a> pyrocumulonimbus storms as the "fire-breathing dragon of clouds." They can also generate hundreds of lightning strokes, which in turn can spark more blazes.</p><div type="image" title="Pyrocumulonimbus satellite image" height="538" width="1076" msid="84490518" hostid="261"></div><p>In general, thunderstorms form when lots of warm, moist air from the ground rises into the sky. As it enters the lowest part of the atmosphere, that air cools, and then sinks closer to Earth - where it warms up again, and subsequently rises. That cycle of rising and falling air is known as convection, and births cumulonimbus, or thunder, clouds.</p><p>But when that heat and moisture rise from a smoky wildfire rather than the ground, the convection creates pyrocumulonimbus clouds.</p><div type="image" title="fire" height="914" width="1200" msid="84490519" hostid="261"></div><p>These anvil-shaped clouds can generate rain like other thunderstorms. Often, though, they unleash powerful blasts of air known as "downbursts," rather than water droplets. In pushing dry air back down toward the ground, these downbursts can scatter a blaze's embers and smoke across large distances. That fuels the flames that generated the storm in the first place.</p><p>In September 2020, the Creek Fire in California created one of the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/californias-creek-fire-creates-its-own-pyrocumulonimbus-cloud">largest types of these clouds</a> ever seen in the US. It measured <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-fire-breathing-dragon-of-clouds-15557949.php#:~:text=The%20Creek%20Fire%20pyrocumulonimbus%20formed,is%20not%20expected%20until%20October.">175,893 acres</a>, or 275 square miles, in size (an area more than three times the size of Seattle).</p><div type="image" title="pyrocumulonimbus.2" height="1560" width="1536" msid="84490520" hostid="261"></div><p>Rising temperatures and drier air are associated with more frequent and more intense <keyword id="394841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="wildfires">wildfires</keyword>. And as wildfires increase in size and severity, fire-generated storms, too, are becoming more common.</p><p>In 2002, Canada, the US, and Mexico saw about <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/pyrocb.html">17 such storms</a> in total. About two decades later, the average number of annual pyrocumulonimbus events had jumped to 25 in western North America alone, <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/fire-induced-storms-a-new-danger-from-the-rise-in-wildfires">Yale360 reported</a>. </p>

Oregon's Bootleg Fire is so big it's generating dangerous fire clouds and firestorms that can spark their own lightning

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6360584" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="smoke">Smoke</keyword> from <keyword id="394841" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="wildfires">wildfires</keyword> on the US <keyword id="44875" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="West-coast">West Coast</keyword> has traveled thousands of miles east.</li><li>The smoke has turned skies hazy from Washington, DC, to Portland, Maine – even the Netherlands.</li><li>Large fires are more likely to send smoke high enough to reach the jet stream, which carries it from east to west.</li></ul><p>On Tuesday, residents of the Midwest and the <keyword id="127185" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="East-coast">East Coast</keyword> woke up to milky skies and pinkish suns. </p><p>At first glance, some of the formations look a bit like clouds – but they're not. At least, not ordinary ones. Instead, they're hazy formations high in the atmosphere, generated by smoke from thousands of miles away. </p><p>California, Oregon, and Washington have all been battling a <a href="https://www.insider.com/nasa-wildfire-images-from-space-california-oregon-2020-9">record-breaking wildfires</a>. More than 100 fires have burned over 4.5 million acres across the three states over the last month. California is fighting the biggest fire ever recorded in state history: <a href="https://www.insider.com/west-coast-wildfires-map-of-biggest-fires-color-coded-2020-9">the August Complex Fire</a>. At nearly 800,000 acres, it's almost twice the size of the previous record-holder, the 459,000-acre Mendocino Complex Fire from 2018.</p><p>Now, smoke from those fires is drifting across the continent. Some smoke is catching a ride on the polar jet stream, <a href="https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/jet#:~:text=Jet%20streams%20are%20relatively%20narrow,between%20hot%20and%20cold%20air.">which flows west to east</a> at an average of about 110 miles per hour.</p><div type="image" title="nws gif smoke" height="428" width="600" msid="78137937" hostid="261"></div><p>Wildfire smoke has found its way into skies as far as Washington, DC, New York City, and Portland, Maine. It's even been spotted in Ontario, Canada, where resident Juan Moreno-Cruz <a href="https://twitter.com/jmorenocruz/status/1305834247542972416">captured a hazy pink sunrise</a> on Tuesday morning. </p><div type="image" title="juan" height="1536" width="2048" msid="78137938" hostid="261"></div><p>Smoke particles have traveled as far as the Netherlands, more than 5,000 miles away. Meteorologist Geert Jan van Oldenborgh captured the greyish tint on skies above the Reeuwijk Lakes on September 11 and <a href="https://twitter.com/gjvoldenborgh/status/1304478828476198912">later confirmed its presence via satellite imagery.</a></p><div type="image" title="west coast wildfires smoke netherlandss" height="3024" width="4032" msid="78137940" hostid="261"></div><p>"Made worse by climate change," van Oldenborgh wrote in a tweet accompanying the images. </p><h2>Smoke is polluting the atmosphere across the continent</h2><p>In addition to the visible haze, the wildfire smoke is spreading an invisible, deadly gas across the atmosphere above North America: carbon monoxide. NASA satellite readings over the last week show that CO concentrations over the continent are <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-monitors-carbon-monoxide-from-california-wildfires">more than 10 times higher</a> than normal. Though the gas isn't yet impacting the lower-lying air we breathe, strong winds could eventually carry it downwards and cause significant air pollution.</p><iframe frameborder="0" class="juxtapose" width="100%" height="430" src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=3b483a2e-f79e-11ea-bf88-a15b6c7adf9a"></iframe><p>In the sliding image above, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/western-us-smoke-from-fires-stretching-across-the-country">NASA satellites captured</a> the smoke reaching the East Coast. On the left, satellite imagery shows an unfiltered view of the smoke's spread; on the right, NASA air quality-measuring instruments show how carbon monoxide and other particles have traveled. Red patches indicate higher concentrations of harmful particles.</p><h2>Climate change is making fires bigger, which means smoke can travel farther</h2><p>When the smoke rises high enough, it can enter the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/weather/reference/jet-stream/#:~:text=Jet%20streams%20are%20fast%2Dmoving,that%20circulate%20above%20the%20Earth.&amp;text=Jet%20streams%20travel%20in%20the,(5%20to%209%20miles).es).">tropopause</a> – the area between the troposphere and the stratosphere, where jet streams travel.</p><p>The bigger the wildfire, the more likely it is to can generate pyrocumulonimbus clouds: enormous thunderclouds of smoke and ash that spiral high into the sky, meeting the path of a jetstream and sometimes making it into the stratosphere. Aside from volcanic eruptions, pyrocumulonimbus clouds are the primary way <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0039-3#Abs1">vast quantities of smoke get released</a> high in the atmosphere.</p><p>"It acts like a giant chimney, taking smoke from the ground and injecting it to the altitude of a jet aircraft," David Peterson, a meteorologist with the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-fire-breathing-dragon-of-clouds-15557949.php">told the San Francisco Chronicle</a>. </p><p>The largest pyrocumulonimbus events ever recorded worldwide have all occurred in the past three years, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-fire-breathing-dragon-of-clouds-15557949.php">according to the San Francisco Chronicle</a>. That's because large, hot fires are more likely to produce pyrocumulonimbus clouds, and climate change leads to <a href="https://www.insider.com/california-fires-biggest-in-history-august-complex-fire-2020-9">bigger and more intense wildfires</a>.</p><p>As temperatures rise, more water evaporates from the soil, drying out the land. Snow also melts sooner, and spring <keyword id="6359992" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="weather">weather</keyword> arrives earlier. Early snowmelt and high temperatures deprive vegetation of water, drying it out in time for wildfire season. </p><p>In the US, the five years in which the most acreage burned due to wildfires have all been since 2005, <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf">according to the Congressional Research Service</a>. </p><p>Australia, meanwhile, saw one of its most destructive <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/world/australia/fires.html">fire seasons in history</a> in December and January, and those produced an unusually high number of pyrocumulonimbus clouds. Smoke from Australia's fires circumnavigated the globe, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/from-smoke-going-round-the-world-to-aerosol-levels-nasa-observes-australias-bushfires/">according to NASA</a>.</p>

Smoke from the West Coast wildfires is causing hazy skies in New York and even reaching as far as the Netherlands

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A marine biologist found thousands of dead mussels, clams, and starfish on a Vancouver beach Sunday.</li><li>They died as a result of the heat in the record-breaking heatwave that hit <keyword id="6356687" type="LOCATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="canada">Canada</keyword> in June. </li><li>He estimates that more than a billion seashore animals died on Canada's Salish Sea coastline alone.</li></ul><p>Tens of thousands of clams, mussels, sea stars, and snails were found boiled to death in a Vancouver, Canada, beach during the country's record-breaking <keyword id="55544" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="heat-wave">heat wave</keyword>.</p><p>Chris Harley, a marine biologist at the University of British Columbia, was alerted to the deaths when he smelled a foul stench coming from Vancouver's Kitsilano Beach on Sunday.</p><p>He told <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/intertidal-animals-ubc-research-1.6090774">Canada's CBC news network</a> he was "stunned" to make the discovery. </p><p>British Columbia hit record-high temperatures three days in a row in late June, hitting <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/30/never-seen-anything-like-this-100s-dead-amid-canada-heat-wave">121.3 degrees Fahrenheit on June 29.</a></p><p>It is not clear when the shellfish died. Harley told the CBC that most intertidal animals can only bear a temperatures of up to 86 Fahrenheit; thermal imaging on June 28 showed that the temperature on the Vancouver coastline hit about 122 degrees.</p><div type="image" title="A map shows the Western coast of Canada and the US. A circle shows the Salish sea." height="1313" width="1750" msid="84233780" hostid="261"></div><p>The death of these animals will temporarily affect water quality in the area as mussels and clams filter the sea, Harley said, according to CBC.</p><p>By calculating how many dead sea animals were found in a small area, Harley also estimated to CBC that more than a billion seashore animals living along the Salish Sea coastline might have died.</p><p>This is not the first time a heat wave has killed shellfish. A 2019 heat wave caused the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/california-heat-wave-so-intense-it-cooks-mussels-inside-shells-2019-6">largest die-off of mussels in Bodega Head</a>, a bay on the California coast.</p><p>The temperatures in Canada have been so intense that wildfires have been making pyrocumulonimbus, clouds that can generate tornadoes and lightning which can cause more wildfires, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/canada-wildfire-heat-generating-pyrocumulonimbus-storm-clouds-2021-7">Insider's Aylin Woodward reported</a>.</p>

Mussels, clams, and other shellfish in Canada's seas boiled to death in its record-breaking heat wave

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The Bootleg Fire in <keyword id="94113" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Oregon">Oregon</keyword> has grown so large that its smoke plumes can be seen from <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword>. </li><li>The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared satellite footage of the fire this week. </li><li>The fire was only 30% contained as of Tuesday morning, having burned over 360,000 acres.</li></ul><p>The Bootleg Fire that has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oregon-bootleg-fire-creating-fire-clouds-pyrocumulonimbus-storms-2021-7">scorched more than 600 square miles in Oregon</a> is so big it can be seen from space.</p><p>Videos shared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this week show <a href="https://twitter.com/NOAASatellitePA/status/1416391841755418624">smoke plumes</a> rising into <a href="https://twitter.com/NOAASatellitePA/status/1417132147928928259">the air from the Bootleg Fire.</a> The fire has burned over 360,000 acres, officials said.</p><p>InciWeb, the national incident information system for wildfires, <a href="https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/map/7609/0/116372">reported that as of Tuesday morning,</a> the Bootleg Fire was only 30% contained. The fire may not be fully contained until November, NOAA said.</p><p>The Bootleg Fire <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oregon-bootleg-fire-creating-fire-clouds-pyrocumulonimbus-storms-2021-7">has also been producing its own weather</a>, as pyrocumulonimbus storms have formed from the clouds created by the smoke from the fire. The clouds can spawn fire tornadoes or cause lightning strikes that can spread fire.</p><p>The fire clouds are creating multiple pyrocumulus clouds that can grow up to six miles high and can be seen from 100 miles away.</p><p>Authorities have said that the clouds are forming every day between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. local time.</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet blockquote" data-lang="en" data-cards="" data-conversation="">-NOAA Satellites - Public Affairs  (@NOAASatellitePA) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1416391841755418624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 17, 2021</a></blockquote><blockquote class="twitter-tweet blockquote" data-lang="en" data-cards="" data-conversation="">-NOAA Satellites - Public Affairs  (@NOAASatellitePA) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1417132147928928259?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 19, 2021</a></blockquote><p>"The fire is so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it's changing the weather," Marcus Kauffman, an Oregon forestry department spokesman, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/climate/bootleg-wildfire-weather.html?action=click&amp;module=Top%20Stories&amp;pgtype=HomepageHomepage">told The New York Times</a> on Monday. "Normally the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do."</p><p>The videos were taken by NOAA's GOES-17 environmental satellite, which monitors weather in the Western Hemisphere. The satellite has an orbit height of more than 22,000 miles.</p>

The Bootleg Fire in Oregon is so massive it can be seen from space, satellite video shows

<ul class="summary-list"><li>In a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-blames-california-fires-forest-management-on-land-he-controls-2020-9">trip to California</a> this week, President <keyword id="6354862" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="trump">Trump</keyword> blamed <keyword id="2379" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="California">California</keyword>'s record-breaking <keyword id="41285" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Wildfire">wildfire</keyword> season on forest mismanagement and dismissed the role of <keyword id="6361617" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="climate-change">climate change</keyword>.</li><li>However, climate change has exacerbated wildfire seasons all over the world, from Australia to Alaska. </li><li>Warming temperatures dry out soil, increase the likelihood of dry lightning, and make heat waves more common — all of which raise fire risk. </li></ul><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/california-wildfires-gavin-newsom-briefing-packet-pictures-huge-font-2020-9">California's massive wildfires</a> have already burned more than 3.1 million acres so far this year: more than 3% of the state's total land. The state has seen <a href="https://www.insider.com/california-fires-biggest-in-history-august-complex-fire-2020-9">three of its four largest fires</a> in history, and the blazes have killed at least 20 people. Two months remain in fire season. </p><p>During a trip to California this week, President Trump <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-blames-california-fires-forest-management-on-land-he-controls-2020-9">blamed</a> local forest management practices for the out-of-control blazes. When Gov. Gavin Newsom's natural-resources secretary, Wade Crowfoot, asked Trump to acknowledge climate change's role in strengthening wildfires, the president refused.</p><p>"I don't think science knows, actually," Trump said.</p><p>He's wrong. Scientific evidence suggests that climate change makes wildfires stronger and more frequent in several different ways. </p><div type="image" title="flames leap" height="3020" width="4537" msid="78168347" hostid="261"></div><p>"To cut to the chase: Were the heat wave and the lightning strikes and the dryness of the vegetation affected by global warming? Absolutely yes," David Romps, director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/20/1007478/california-wildfires-climate-change-heatwaves/">told MIT Technology Review</a> in August, after lightning ignited hundreds of fires across California. "Were they made significantly hotter, more numerous, and drier because of global warming?  Yes, likely yes, and yes."</p><p>Trump is right that forest management issues <a href="https://twitter.com/ErinEARoss/status/1305303927936544770">contribute</a> to California's wildfire crisis. That's largely because state and federal policies focused on suppressing fires for decades, even though most forests actually <a href="https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/how-forest-fire-benefit-living-things-2.htm">need some burning</a> to stay healthy. (Although Trump seems to blame California's leaders for this, the federal government <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=fire+management+california+issues&amp;rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS911US911&amp;oq=fire+management+california+issues&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2j69i60l5.3239j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">owns the majority of the state's forests</a> and is thus responsible for their management.) </p><p>Forest management practices are <a href="https://lhc.ca.gov/sites/lhc.ca.gov/files/Reports/242/ExecutiveSummary242.pdf">starting to incorporate</a> prescribed burns now.</p><p>Still, forest management practices alone cannot explain the ferocity of the California wildfire season. And they certainly can't explain why wildfires are getting larger and more destructive in other parts of the world as well.</p><h2><strong>The world is seeing more ferocious fire seasons</strong></h2><p>In the US overall, the five years in which the most acreage has burned due to wildfires have all occurred since 2005, <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf">according to the Congressional Research Service</a>. At the same time, the country's average temperature has <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-american-warming-us-heats-up-earth-day">risen by</a> 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970.</p><p>Beyond California, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon have all had abnormally intense fire seasons this year. Oregon has seen about 1 million acres burn as of Tuesday, nearly double the state's average from previous years, <a href="https://twitter.com/OregonGovBrown/status/1304560597812482048">according to Gov. Kate Brown</a>.</p><p>In Colorado, meanwhile at least 286,000 acres have burned, putting the 2020 fire season on track to become the <a href="https://coloradonewsline.com/2020/09/14/colorado-wildfires-latest-updates-on-active-2020-fire-season/#:~:text=Amid%20hot%2C%20dry%20weather%20that,most%20active%20in%20state%20history.&amp;text=The%20Pine%20Gulch%20Fire%20has,area%20north%20of%20Grand%20Junction.ion.">most active in state history.</a></p><div type="image" title="oregon wildfire fire" height="1406" width="2500" msid="78168350" hostid="261"></div><p>In Australia's last wildfire season, fires burned over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/world/australia/bush-fires-preventive-burns.html">46 million acres</a> across the country, an area larger than Syria. They destroyed over 5,900 structures, claimed more than two dozen human lives, and killed hundreds of millions of animals. The fires were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_bushfires_in_Australia">some of the largest</a> in the country's history. </p><p>Even the Arctic region is seeing unprecedented fires. Ten times as many large fires (blazes greater than 1,000 acres) burned there in the 2000s than in the 1950s and 1960s. The Arctic is <a href="https://www.insider.com/zombie-wildfires-in-siberia-smoldered-beneath-ice-reignited-2020-9">warming twice as quickly</a> as the rest of the world, on average.</p><p>In Alaska, 28.1 million acres burned from 2000 to 2019 – <a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/carly-phillips/alaska-wildfires-climate-change#:~:text=Alaska%20is%20on%20fire.,that%20of%20Yellowstone%20National%20Park.&amp;text=Alaska's%20ecosystems%20are%20already%20some,that's%20twice%20the%20global%20average.age.">nearly double </a>the amount of land burned from 1980 to 2000. The average area that burns during Alaska's wildfire season is expected to double again by 2050 if the world doesn't curb fossil-fuel emissions, <a href="http://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/AgeofAlaskanWildfires.pdf">according to the National Climate Assessment</a>. </p><h2><strong>Warmer temperatures dry out soil</strong></h2><p>Prior to its record-breaking 2020 fire season, California saw its driest February <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/27/california-drought-nearly-a-quarter-of-california-now-in-drought-feds-say/">since at least 1864</a>. In some parts of the state, including San Francisco, not a single drop of rain fell. January was also fairly dry, and both months were hotter than usual. Snowpack in the Sierras only reached 44% of normal levels. </p><div type="image" title="07_sonoma vineyards_dry creek and quivira vineyards_lnu lightning complex wildfire_healdsburg california_20august2020_wv3 natural color image" height="5700" width="8969" msid="78168355" hostid="261"></div><p>Dry conditions in the winter lead to dry foliage in the spring and summer — prime fuel for wildfires. Higher average temperatures also dry out vegetation, even without a decrease in rainfall. </p><p>That's because as temperatures rise, more water evaporates from soil. Snow also melts sooner, and spring <keyword id="6359992" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="weather">weather</keyword> arrives earlier. In 2017, for instance, the growing season for certain widespread plants started <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-02/ugs-jhe022317.php?utm_source=Climate+News+Network&amp;utm_campaign=9dc2db9618-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_01&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_1198ea8936-9dc2db9618-38766337618-38766337">22 days earlier</a> than usual in Washington, DC. </p><h2><strong>Extreme heat becomes more common</strong></h2><p>Climate change also increases the likelihood of extreme heat, which in turn can lead to more strong, hot fires. The 10 warmest years on record worldwide have all occurred since 1998, <a href="https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/projected-ranks#:~:text=Global%20temperature%20data%20document%20a,)%2C%20and%201998%2C%20respectively.">according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</a>.</p><p>Even a small amount of warming shifts the range of possible temperatures up, causing numbers that would previously have been extreme to become more common. Think of it like a bell curve: As the curve moves right towards higher numbers, a temperature at the extremely rare end of the curve falls closer to the middle.</p><p>"Our recent past is merely a paltry precursor to a much hotter future," Jeff Berardelli, a climate contributor for CBS <keyword id="6355005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="news">News</keyword>, <a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/06/heat-waves-and-climate-change-is-there-a-connection/">wrote in Yale Climate Connections</a>.</p><p>In March, <a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/bushfires-in-australia-2019-2020/">researchers found</a> that Australia's devastating wildfires in December and January happened mainly as a consequence of a prolonged heatwave in 2019. That kind of heatwave is now 10 times more likely in the region than it was in 1900. Overall, climate change made giant wildfires 30% more likely than before, the researchers concluded.</p><h2><strong>Climate change also makes lightning more frequent</strong></h2><p>Thunderstorms occur when air is warm and humid. That was the case during the heatwave that struck California in August, which was followed by a barrage of lightning that in turn started hundreds of wildfires. </p><p>Climate change makes lightning more common as well. A <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/20/1007478/california-wildfires-climate-change-heatwaves/">2014 study</a> found that each degree in planetary warming may increase the number of worldwide lightning strikes by 12%. </p><div type="image" title="lightning california" height="3817" width="5737" msid="78168370" hostid="261"></div><p>Fires ignited by lightning, meanwhile, are also likely to increase worldwide, <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180531084415.htm">according to a 2018 study</a>, since more frequent lightning bolts strike are expected to strike drier grass and forests.</p><p>What's more, large fires are more likely to generate <a href="https://www.insider.com/california-wildfires-generate-their-own-weather-via-thunderclouds-2020-9">pyrocumulonimbus clouds</a> that are capable of making their own weather – including, in some cases, lightning.</p>

Here we go again: Yes, there's a clear link between wildfires and climate change, despite what President Trump keeps saying

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/537fa9106bb3f7de75a0f9db-716-478/screen%20shot%202014-05-23%20at%203.56.43%20pm.png?maxX=800" border="0" alt="Screen Shot 2014 05 23 at 3.56.43 PM" width="800" /><p class="source"><span>NASA Earth Observatory</span></p></div><p></p></div>Spring came early to southern Alaska in 2014, bringing warm and dry weather. By the end of May, vegetation was already primed to burn. So when a fire broke out on the Kenai Peninsula on the evening of May 19, 2014, it quickly blew up into a massive wildfire. Called the <a href="http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/3878/">Funny River Fire,</a> it had burned more than 43,000 acres by 5:30 p.m. local time on May 21.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/?p=5447">Operational Land Imager</a> on the <a href="http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/?page_id=4071">Landsat 8</a> satellite acquired these images at 1:13 p.m. local time on May 20. The top image shows the scene in natural color, while the lower <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/FalseColor/page6.php">false-color image</a> incorporates short wave infrared light (bands 6, 5, 3). Each view provides unique information about the fire.</p>
<p>Smoke is the dominant feature in this image: <div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/537fa8b66bb3f7ea72a0f9e1-4000-5000/funnyriver_oli_2014140_lrg.jpg" border="0" alt="funnyriver_oli_2014140_lrg" style="color: #000000;" /><p class="source"><span>NASA Earth Observatory</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>The dense smoke masks the fire, which is trouble for firefighters trying to control the blaze from the air. Billowing above the smoke plume are at least two <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/PyroClouds/page1.php">pyrocumulonimbus clouds</a> - thunderclouds formed when superheated air rises above an intense fire. </p>
<p>Hail, lightning, and strong winds often occur where there are pyrocumulonimbus clouds. These clouds also loft smoke high into the atmosphere, allowing it to travel long distances. The smoke plume for the Funny River fire <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83725&amp;eocn=home&amp;eoci=nh">arched hundreds of kilometers</a> across the Gulf of Alaska and <a href="http://dec.alaska.gov/Applications/Air/airtoolsweb/Advisories">affected air quality</a> across the Kenai Peninsula and south-central Alaska.</p>
<p>The infrared light in this image cuts through the smoke to show the fire front and burned area:</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/537fa8b6eab8eadf0fa0f9e6-2002-2501/funnyriver_oli_2014140_swir_lrg.jpg" border="0" alt="funnyriver_oli_2014140_swir_lrg" /><p class="source"><span>NASA Earth Observatory</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Smoke is blue, while the higher, cooler pyrocumulonimbus clouds are white. The newly burned land is dark brown. The active fire area is orange and appears to be burning on both the eastern and western edges of the burn area.</p>
<p>The vegetation around the fire has patches of brown-red in the lower image. This could be the burn scar from an old fire, or it could be <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=78677">insect-killed trees.</a> The fire is burning in the <a href="http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Kenai/">Kenai National Wildlife Refuge,</a> which was the center of a <a href="http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Kenai/what_we_do/resource_management.html">spruce bark beetle outbreak</a> that spread across four million acres of south-central Alaska. <a href="http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/3878/">Firefighters noted</a> that efforts to clear beetle-killed trees is now limiting the fire's growth.</p><div class="feed-footer-wrapper"><div class="feed-footer">

  <h3>More from NASA Earth Observatory:</h3>

  <ul>
       <li>
     <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=83728&amp;src=eorss-iotd">Manning Islands, Nunavut, Canada</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=83732&amp;src=eorss-iotd">Funny River Fire, Alaska</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83769&amp;src=eorss-nh">Activity at Sakurajima Volcano</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83764&amp;src=eorss-nh">Flooding in the Balkans</a>
    </li>
       <li>
     <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=83747&amp;src=eorss-nh">Slide Fire, Arizona</a>
    </li>
     </ul>
 </div></div>

You Searched For "pyrocumulonimbus" and got 9 results

Wildfires and record temperatures in Canada are generating 'fire-breathing' pyrocumulonimbus thunderstorms

Aylin Woodward

California's fires are so intense, some make their own thunderstorms. NASA calls the formations the 'fire-breathing dragon of clouds.'

Susie Neilson

The ozone hole is set to heal by 2060 — a rare climate success story — but wildfires could slow its progress

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Oregon's Bootleg Fire is so big it's generating dangerous fire clouds and firestorms that can spark their own lightning

Aylin Woodward

Smoke from the West Coast wildfires is causing hazy skies in New York and even reaching as far as the Netherlands

Susie Neilson

Mussels, clams, and other shellfish in Canada's seas boiled to death in its record-breaking heat wave

Marianne Guenot

The Bootleg Fire in Oregon is so massive it can be seen from space, satellite video shows

Kelly McLaughlin

Here we go again: Yes, there's a clear link between wildfires and climate change, despite what President Trump keeps saying

Susie Neilson

NASA Captures Crazy Images Of A Huge Alaskan Forest Fire From Space

NASA Earth Observatory