GrumpyUncleSean🔥

Wildfires are getting deadlier and costing more. Experts warn they’re becoming unstoppable Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decade

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

“It is unambiguous and it is clear climate change is playing a role. These aren’t just bigger fires, they’re fires occurring under increasingly extreme weather conditions that make them unstoppable.”

Love it!

Can you please provide a gift link?

2025 Realtor.com Housing and Climate Risk Report Understanding climate risk in the housing market is essential, as these challenges not only affect residential safety but also influence property values, insurance costs, and overall market stability....

From Realtor's 2025 Housing and Climate Risk Report:

US homes at "severe or extreme" #climaterisk:

Flood: 6% of homes ($3.4 tr in value, inc. $1 tr outside FEMA flood zones so mostly uninsured)

Wind: 18% of homes ($8 tr)

Wildfire: 5.6% ($3 tr)

www.realtor.com/research/cli...

Intensifying Fire Season Aridity Portends Ongoing Expansion of Severe Wildfire in Western US Forests Area burned by wildfire has increased in western US forests over recent decades. However, high-severity fire—fire that kills all or most trees—is also an important metric of fire activity given its d...

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Please see our new paper just published in Global Change Biology: “Intensifying fire season aridity portends ongoing expansion of severe wildfire in western US forests”. 🧪🌍🔥

Our paper takes a close look at managing designated wilderness in an era of unprecedented change. Please check it out.

A great achievement by lead author @clareboe.bsky.social!
🧪🌍🔥

Impact of current and warmer climate conditions on snow cover loss in burned forests Wildfires are causing earlier snowmelt across the western US, and this effect would be exacerbated with projected warmer winters.

New Science Advances paper on the feedback loop between loss of snow feeding more wildfire, and wildfire resulting in earlier snowmelt. As to latter, in snow obs, under average conditions, snow melts earlier during 1st-yr postfire in 99%(!) of western snow zones.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What is the cost of wildfire, windthrow and bark beetles for Europe’s forestry? We estimate that disturbances reduce Europe’s forest value by €115 bn, more than doubling to €247 bn under severe climate change. Led by @johannesmohr.bsky.social, out in @natclimate.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🤠🤠🤠

The California Fire Science Consortium released a research brief based on our article "Untrammeling the wilderness: restoring natural conditions through the return of human-ignited fire." Check it out! 🧪🔥

Yeah, it’s weird! One might think the journal would fix such issues. What you say, @esajournals.bsky.social ?

Big trees burning: Divergent wildfire effects on large trees in open‐ vs. closed‐canopy forests Wildfire activity has accelerated with climate change, sparking concerns about uncharacteristic impacts on mature and old-growth forests containing large trees. Recent assessments have documented fir...

New paper by Garret Meigs and friends:
"Big trees burning: Divergent wildfire effects on large trees in open- vs closed-canopy forests"

From my read, one of the key take home messages is that dense forests, even if large trees are present, are still burning with a lot of high-severity effects🧪🌎🔥

Aha look who's back, it's @terriblemapshq.bsky.social !

Top US Energy Official Lobbies for Fossil Fuels in Europe - Inside Climate News European climate experts say the pro-fossil fuel arguments are based on climate disinformation.

Big tobacco launched the effort to undermine science decades ago, and fossil industries eagerly grabbed the baton. Now, enabled by fossil funded politicians, corrupt judges and misguided media focus on false balance, denialism is now part of official U.S. government policy. Good luck, America ...

It is almost as if all the lawsuits filed over the last few decades that effectively stopped USFS management activities contributed to the extensive forest loss in the southern Sierra and elsewhere …

A Eulogy for Teakettle Justice William O. Douglas, in his dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sierra Club v. Morton, said “Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium...

The Garnet Fire has burned through a place I have worked since 2002. A place I hold dear. We knew this wasn't a matter of if, but when. Unfortunately the leadership on the Sierra National Forest didn't have the same urgency that we did. My eulogy for Teakettle.
www.hurteaulab.org/blog/a-eulog...

"...ferocious fire in recent years, fueled by climate change, has proved fatal to the trees that experts once thought were impervious to flame. An estimated 20% of the world’s mature giant sequoias have died in the last decade due to severe wildfires..."

Hydroclimatic Rebound Drives Extreme Fire in California's Non‐Forested Ecosystems Hydroclimatic rebound occurs when unusually wet periods are followed by intense drying, or vice versa, creating sharp moisture swings. We show that this process drives extreme fire activity in Califo...

New in Global Change Biology: Hydroclimatic rebound—wet periods fueling vegetation growth, followed by rapid drying—drives extreme fires in California’s non-forested biomes. Findings improve early warning & fire forecasts. 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

Spain and Portugal wildfire weather made 40 times more likely by climate crisis, study finds Wildfires were 30% more intense than would have been expected without global heating, scientists say

Deadly wildfires that hit Spain and Portugal last month were 40 TIMES more likely because of the impacts of the climate crisis.

#ThisIsClimateChange.

Find out more here:

Showy dragonflies are being driven extinct by warming and wildfire Nature Climate Change - The authors use 1,603 estimates of local extinctions from 1980 to 2021 to show that dragonfly species with wing ornamentation have disproportionately gone extinct and lost...

new paper from my lab @cudenverclas.bsky.social in @natclimate.nature.com, led by @sarahnalley.bsky.social!

Dragonflies with dark mating ornaments on their wings are disappearing from parts of the United States that have had more warming and wildfire over the last 40 years 🧪🌍🐙

rdcu.be/eFm7e

#WhitebarkPine In The #US Projected To Experience An 80% Reduction In #Climatically Suitable Area By The Mid-21st Century
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doi.org/10.1088/1748...
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #spatialanalysis #model #PNW #USWest #Canada #threatened #ESA #disease #pinebeetle #climatechange #elevation #ecology #range

Old forests, new fires, and a scientific standoff over active management This is the second installment of Mongabay’s coverage of active management tools for forest fires. Read Part 1. Photographs of forests in the western U.S. from the mid-1800s show a starkly different r...

This is well researched. But I bristle at the idea of this as a “scientific standoff.” A hallmark of science is that there are almost always contrary paradigms challenging the dominant one. But you have to know when the weight of evidence is on different planets.

news.mongabay.com/2025/08/old-...

Evaluating macroecological fire impacts on bird populations Fire regimes are context-dependent, as are the ways that animals respond. However, most information on animal responses to fire comes from short-term local field studies, which are hard to extrapolat....

We have a new paper developing methods for looking at bird-fire macroecology. What’s most fascinating to me is that the magnitude *and* direction of fire effects can vary enormously across a species range. Stationarity is dead!! Long live non-stationarity!!

doi.org/10.1002/fee....

Thank you, Meade, for providing this important context!

Climate Change: Wildfires in Europe Hit Area the Size of Cyprus This Year A record summer of blazes on the continent shows how governments and local communities can’t keep up with brutal fire conditions exacerbated by climate change.

🔥 A record summer of blazes in Europe shows how governments and local communities can’t keep up with brutal fire conditions exacerbated by climate change

story via @bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

For context, this isn't just another tree: whitebark pine is vital to high-elevation ecosystems in western North America. Its seeds provide energy-dense food for grizzlies and other animals, it helps retain snowpack to slow runoff and erosion, and it's culturally important to Indigenous communities.

Frontiers | Rising from the ashes: treatments stabilize carbon storage in California’s frequent-fire forests The stability of seasonally dry Western mixed-conifer forests is threatened by the history of fire suppression, logging, and now increasing climate-driven ar...

Forest treatments work to reduce wildfire risk to carbon storage, and also to hot drought mortality. We need more treatments, and we need them now, but also, we need them to be ongoing into the future.🧪🔥 www.frontiersin.org/journals/for...

Climate scientists file a public, point-by-point rebuttal of Trump admin report casting doubt on climate change | CNN More than 85 veteran climate scientists have pushed back against a Trump administration report downplaying the severity of climate change, submitting more than 400 pages in public comments to the Ener...

very nice article by @afreedma.bsky.social at @cnn.com about our comment on the DOE report
www.cnn.com/2025/09/02/c...

The DOE's climate report is a sham, with hand-picked contrarian experts and cherry-picked data that ignores 99% of the scientific literature. by @andrewdessler.com www.realclearscience.com/2025/09/03/t...

One more thing:
The fire severity data used to conduct this study can be downloaded here. This is a gridded dataset of satellite-derived fire severity and pre-fire NDVI for all fires in the western US that burned from 1985 to 2022.
🔥🌍🧪 #OpenScience