Hearing on Climate Change and Wildfires

The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is currently holding a hearing examining the scientific link between a changing climate and the frequency and intensity of wildfires. As the Committee noted in its hearing announcement:

The frequency and intensity of wildfires have increased in recent decades throughout the Western United States. Last year, the Forest Service spent a record $2.5 billion fighting wildfires that burned a record 9.9 million acres (4 million hectares), compared to the ten-year average of 6 million acres. This year 8.7 million acres have burned thus far. The current fires burning in California are expected to cause over $1 billion in property damage alone and have already burned an area the size of Rhode Island. Mounting scientific evidence indicates that the growth in wildfires is linked to global warming and that this trend is likely to intensify in the coming decades.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (pdf) noted that as a result of climate change, "forestfire season is likely to lengthen, and the area subject to high fire danger is likely to increase significantly," and that even now, "Disturbances such as wildfire and insect outbreaks are increasing and are likely to intensify in a warmer future with drier soils and longer growing seasons (very high confidence)."

Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell testifies:

Forest Service Chief Kimbell: "Almost 22 million acres of rural private land, about 8% of all private land located within 10 miles of the National Forest boundaries are projected to undergo increases in housing density by 2030. This, coupled with climate change factors of drought and warmer temperatures will increase the complexity and the cost of firefighting."

Ed Markey questions Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell:

Forest Service Chief Kimbell: "Certainly in the last several years we've seen an increase in the size of wildfires and the number of large wildfires. We've seen the number of fires over 100,000 acres increase dramatically since 1990. You can see in this graph here the increase since 1990... those are the very expensive fires, those are the very troubling fires, and many of those fires are the ones that we're talking about like in Southern California with nearly 2,000 homes burned just in the last week and a half."