Two of the world’s most fire-prone regions have followed strikingly different wildfire trajectories despite both experiencing a warming climate.
Two of the world’s most fire-prone regions have followed strikingly different wildfire trajectories despite both experiencing a warming climate. Burned forest area has surged across the U.S. Southwest, while eastern Australia has not seen the same increase.
A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters indicates that a decades-long shift in the tropical Pacific Ocean contributed to these contrasting trends.
“We found that what’s happening in the tropical Pacific over longer timescales, not just during El Niño and La Niña, is another significant piece of the puzzle,” said lead author Tess Wei-Ping Jacobson, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies and recent Ph.D. at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School.
Read More: Columbia Climate School
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