According to a list , the state鈥檚 top 10 largest wildfires have all taken place in the past 20 years. And the Pine Gulch Fire burning north of Grand Junction is on track to eclipse the 2002 Hayman Fire as the largest in our state鈥檚 history.
So why is our state seeing all of these record-breaking fires?
KUNC鈥檚 Colorado Edition reached out to Jennifer Balch, a fire scientist and director of Earth Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, to help answer that question.
Interview Highlights
These interview highlights have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Matt Bloom: Why is our state seeing more record-breaking fires in the last 10 to 20 years?
Jennifer Balch: We鈥檙e definitely seeing the impacts of climate change across the West. In fact, our fuels are drier as a function of increasing temperatures, and that鈥檚 leading to a lot more burning. In fact, it just takes a little bit of warming for fires to respond really significantly. And so we鈥檙e seeing a little bit of warming and a lot more burning.
And across the West we鈥檝e seen a doubling of the amount of forests that have burned since the 1980s. And since the 1970s, we鈥檙e seeing five times more large fires than we did in that decade.
"Fire needs three things to burn: it needs a warm and dry climate, it needs fuels to burn, and it needs an ignition source. And people are effectively changing all three."
So we know warming is a major driver. How does the warming impact the size, duration and severity of these fires?
Fire needs three things to burn: it needs a warm and dry climate, it needs fuels to burn, and it needs an ignition source. And people are effectively changing all three.
So we have seen about a 2 degree Fahrenheit increase across the Western U.S. since the earlier part of this century and we鈥檝e seen actually significant warming in the region that鈥檚 burning in western Colorado. In fact it鈥檚 actually much higher than that, and it鈥檚 twice the global average increase in temperature.
So right where we have wildfires burning right now is essentially a hotspot of climate change. So that鈥檚 one thing.
The other thing is fuels. And we change fuels, we bisect through building roads, we introduce invasive grasses, and there鈥檚 lots of ways that people change fuels and fuel structure.
And then the last piece that鈥檚 also really important is that people provide the sparks, sometimes, that can burn fires. There鈥檚 two general sources of ignitions: one is lightning and one is people. And we鈥檙e right in the middle of the lightning ignition season right now. So a lot of fires across the West are started by lightning, but we also have human-started fires in the mix.
The other thing that鈥檚 happening is when you throw climate change in the mix with human ignitions, we鈥檙e essentially creating longer fire seasons because of a warmer fall, and warmer summers that the ignitions then are more related to what people are doing than they are to lightning.
Could you help us understand how big this year鈥檚 fire season is in Colorado compared to the normal, or the average?
The four largest wildfires that are burning right now in Colorado have already burned through over 200,000 acres, and this is well above the average since 2002, which is about 80,000 acres. So we鈥檙e more than double the average that we鈥檝e seen over the last several decades.
WILDFIRE TRACKER: Cameron Peak, Williams Fork, Grizzly Creek and Pine Gulch
And the fire season is not over yet 鈥� it鈥檚 only August and half the state is in severe to extreme drought conditions right now.
"We鈥檝e committed to a certain degree of climate change, and in order to reverse or mitigate this, we鈥檙e looking at a very long road."
Can we expect to see more record-breaking fires in Colorado over the next decade?
Yeah, I鈥檓 certainly not expecting our fires to go down in size anytime soon. We鈥檝e committed to a certain degree of climate change, and in order to reverse or mitigate this, we鈥檙e looking at a very long road. And so the next several decades, I鈥檓 not expecting our fires to be smaller or to go out easier.
In fact, I think our firefighting community, they鈥檙e feeling the heat right now in terms of being totally stretched thin.
We鈥檝e got firefighting communities that are fighting fires all across the West right now, and they鈥檙e exhausted. And we鈥檙e making hard decisions about resource allocation in terms of where we put fires out.
In fact, in Colorado one of the most important ones right now is Grizzly Creek, because it鈥檚 right along the Colorado River, which supplies a huge number of people and agriculture with water. So fires are important, because they essentially remove and denude landscapes, and make it easier for flooding to carry debris and particulates down to our river systems.
So, as a fire scientist, I don鈥檛 expect fire to go away anytime soon, and I think we are looking at very large fires and more record-breaking years.
This interview is from KUNC鈥檚 Colorado Edition from Aug. 26. You can hear the full episode here.
