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It has driven climate change for decades drought scientists say the reservoirs are drying up in the western United States and are contributing to the onset of wildfires.
The flames have burned more than a million acres (more than 404,000 acres) across the country this year. More than 20,000 fires will be burned in 2021 – the highest number of fires a year since 2011.
To survive people turn to air conditioning heat waves, California and other states are warning people to conserve energy to prevent power outages.
According to US drought monitor, western states are experiencing extreme and exceptional drought conditions. The conditions have been going on for two decades, and scientists have led them to call them “megadrought”.
“The southwestern U.S. is in a similar long drought or megadrought that we haven’t seen on the observation record in recent millennia,” explained John Abatzoglou, an associate professor at the University of California, who studies climate and weather.
“In the west this year, there is an astronomical piece of land that is experiencing severe drought,” Abatzoglou said. Last winter and spring, low rainfall and hot temperatures led to a low snow pack in the mountains, leading to a rapid drying of the earth’s surface, he said.
Fires threatening Arizona ranchers
Arizona, which has a fire season in the spring, has the largest fire and surface area of its state to date, according to the National Inter-Agency Fire Center. Seven fires have burned 270,000 acres (109,265 acres) across the state. Heat and dry conditions have led to a reduction in fires by the Office of Spatial Planning.
Firefighters are working on the largest fire, the Telegraph Fire, in the Tonto National Forest and in the mountains east of Phoenix, which has burned nearly 166,000 acres (67,178 acres). It is now 72 percent but the surrounding community continues to threaten it.
Armando Rodriguez, a professional bullfighter in the town of Winkelman in Arizona, told Al Jazeera that he could see smoke on the mountain tops. The sheriff warned his community and others in the area to be “ready”.
Smoke plumes from a fire in Arizona on June 7, 2021, in a picture obtained from social media while a fire broke out. [Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management/via Reuters]
“Roughly everyone is packing their things and getting ready to get the green light if they get to where they need to go,” Rodriguez said by phone on Thursday.
If he orders an evacuation, he plans to call his neighbors to help gather 500 cattle, load them into trailers and take them to safety.
Since the 1960s, his family has had ranchers around. “We’re not strangers,” he said about the fires.
In April, flames burned in the nearby Dudleyville community, burning at least 12 homes and forcing 200 people to flee, according to the Associated Press news agency.
“We’ve dealt with fires, floods, so nothing new for us, but it seems to be happening more often this year,” Rodriguez said.
Blaming climate change
It’s not clear that climate change is to blame for lower rainfall in the west this year, but it is certainly to blame for the larger factors that accelerate the drought, Abatzoglour said.
Global warming is dropping more rainfall instead of snow as rain, which changes the water cycle (water from the ocean to the atmosphere to the ground and again), he said. A warmer climate helps to increase drying and evaporation.
“Heating is basically acting as a long-term tax on the western water budget,” he explained.
Scientists expect another dangerous wildfire in California.
The lack of rainfall and snow packs said plants across the state are dry, crunchy and ready to burn, said Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University. This means the state will probably have a fire season sooner, due to increasingly dangerous fires in the summer and fall, he said.
Clements said a combination of factors is causing more intense fires in California: Poor management has left forests overgrown with trees and shrubs. Fires are part of a natural cycle that allows life to flourish, but he explained that “fires have been entering our ecosystems for a hundred years.”
Now, climate change is drying up that extra fuel, so there’s plenty of wind ready to turn on and burn.
In Arizona, Rodriguez expects rain and prays for his community to be safe. “Shout out to all the firefighters and first responders who are helping right now, may God be with them, and hopefully no one gets hurt,” he said.
“As long as there is fire, that is a beast that breathes, and it will burn what it burns,” he added.
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