- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Wildfire frequency is increasing, and the fires are getting bigger, hotter and more destructive, explained artist Andy Warner in an infographic posted on KQED's The Lowdown, a website that connects the newsroom to the classroom. The source of information for the 10-panel comic was research by Max Moritz, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension specialist, and his colleagues.
Moritz' 2014 research is titled Large wildfire...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Across California, pine trees that have been weakened by the drought are having trouble defending themselves from bark beetles, causing widespread tree death. The dead trees won't cause fires, but when ignited they will be hotter and be more difficult to control, according to articles that ran over the weekend in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat and the Desert Sun.
“Statewide, it's horrific,” said Greg Giusti, UC ANR Cooperative Extension advisor.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Government fire agencies need to take a new look at their long-standing policy of suppressing wildfire, according to UC research that was covered in the New Yorker magazine and other major media outlets today.
“To reduce flood damage, we make floodplain maps. To reduce earthquake damage, we form earthquake commissions. When it comes to fire, we hand everything over to the firefighters," said Max Moritz, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. He is the lead author of a review paper about wildfire published today in the journal...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The mainstream news media tends to quickly link extreme weather events with climate change, but the practice can backfire, reported an article in Science. (Access to the full story requires login.)
A steady stream of extreme weather events makes for a steady media drumbeat on climate change, but the stream can run dry, reported Richard Kerr. For example, the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season has produced just two short-lived, Category 1 hurricanes. Such mild weather can become an argument for climate skeptics.
The article opened with a quote from "a well-meaning non-scientist" who tried to use extreme weather to argue that global warming is real -...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The catastrophic Rim Fire, which has burned about 343 square miles in and around Yosemite, will provide abundant information for fire scientists to study the effects of forest management techniques, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.
The key question, the story said, is what happened on Aug. 22 and 23, when a 200-foot wall of flames burned almost 90,000 acres.
"Almost half of this very, very large fire happened in just two days," said Max Moritz, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC...
