The Consequences of Beetle Kill, Drought, and Climate Change

Look at this picture for a while. It shows a complex of fires going on southwest of where I live.

These thick plumes are the last gasps of dead trees and drought-ridden vegetation that only needed one strike of lightning to get started. This is what the fires look like from space. The images were taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station and show the results of a confluence of beetles, extreme drought, and climate change. (Read more about this confluence in Alan Boyle’s article at NBCNews.com.)

Ther Wild Rose blaze is now fully contained, meaning that there is a line of control all around it.  The West Fork Complex fire continues to chew its way across the landscape, threatening towns and forests.

This mega-blaze started as three smaller fires (started by lightning), and together they consumed approximately 75,000 acres (30,000 hectares) by June 25. The fires were burning in rugged terrain with large amounts of beetle-killed spruce forests. According to the information published with this image by NASA, the West Fork Complex fire was so hot that it spawned numerous pyrocumulus clouds. These are tall, cauliflower-shaped clouds that billowed high above the surface. Pyrocumulus clouds are similar to cumulus clouds, but the heat that forces the air to rise (which leads to cooling and condensation of water vapor) comes from fire instead of sun-warmed ground.

Scientists monitor pyrocumulus clouds closely because the clouds can inject smoke and pollutants high into the atmosphere. As pollutants are dispersed by wind, they can affect air quality over broad areas. As noted by the University Maryland at Baltimore County (UMBC) Smog Blog, smoke from the fire contributed to elevated concentrations of particulate matter over large sections of the eastern United States. We’ve smelled the smoke from this fire over our own home, which is at least a day’s drive away. Last year we had plumes of smoke over much of the state from fires in Arizona and New Mexico, and so in addition to the dangers that fires pose to immediate areas, they also affect life great distances away.

Preliminary observations by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite indicate the West Fork Complex fire lofted smoke plumes as high as 13.5 kilometers (8.4 miles) up in the atmosphere. Satellite observations also show that smoke from the fire reached European air space by June 24.

This year is a very dry one for the southwestern part of Colorado. All of us who live in or near the mountains are very aware of the fire dangers. Although our area got quite a lot of snow and rain this year, the chances for one lightning strike, one cigarette butt flicked out of a car by an ignorant idiot, or an illegal campfire to do great damage are foremost in our minds. We see the loss of trees to beetle kill.

We also see the changes in the forests and wildlife due to the warmer temperatures and more extreme weather brought on by changes in Earth’s climate.  And, it’s not just forest fires that are a side consequence of climate change. There are people in Oklahoma and Texas and Central Europe, where flooding continues, and Southeast Asia, where monsoon weather is more extreme than usual. THEY also see the effects of climate change. They’re living it first-hand.

The fires I see in this image are just one stark reminder of what we face as our planet’s climate continues to change.  It is time, as President Obama, and many U.S. military leaders and environmental scientists around the world, joined by other world leaders have ALSO said, to confront the issue instead of denying it (in the face of all the evidence). It is time because the people who live in damaged areas and have lost their homes, their livelihoods (and sometimes their lives) around the world are also part of the consequences of climate change. It’s time to get real, people.