The hot, dry, windy conditions that fuel the spread of wildfire may become the "new normal" in the Western United States, according to NASA climate scientists.
For more than a decade, every 99 minutes, two NASA satellites have orbited the Earth, collecting data and gathering images of various fires burning around the globe.
Local governments around the US depend on the satellites to relay the fire data, which is used to provide effective fire management and to issue the appropriate warnings.
This year, wildfires started burning earlier than normal in California and Alaska, but NASA's fire observers report that wildfire activity so far in 2013 is average considering the increase in yearly fires, which are exacerbated by hot, dry, windy weather that is becoming more normal in the Western U.S.
"Fire seasons are getting longer, western regions are getting drier, and more people are living closer to fire-prone areas." said Don Smurthwaite, spokesperson with the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
This year has already seen a number of destructive wildfires, including the Black Forest fire in Colorado, which burned through 16,000 acres in nine days in June, killing two people and destroying 500 homes, and the recent Arizona wildfire which killed 19 members of a Hotshots fire-fighting crew.
Friday NASA issued a report on the state of wildfires in the U.S. and its fire scientists participated in a Google Hangout with reporters to discuss trends and observations regarding wildfires in the U.S.
"Over the last 30 years we have seen an increase in hot and dry conditions that promote fire activity," Doug Morton, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the NASA report. "And across the western U.S. and Alaska, satellites show an increase in the area that burns each year over that same time period."
As of Aug. 8 more than 2.5 million acres in the U.S. have been burned by wildfires, but compared to the 10-year average the total is about 2 million acres below normal. As of the same time last year 4.9 million acres were burned during wildfires.
"The scale of the drought we saw in 2012 across the [Great] Plains and the far range of the Rockies was pretty extreme drought, one you might see only once in a decade," Morton said during the Google Hangout, according to LiveScience.
"By the middle of the century, we're predicting to see years like that four or five times a decade. By the end of the century, it will be like that every year in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies," he said. "It will be the new normal."