37% Wildfires Caused by Greenhouse Gas from Fossil Fuel Companies, Study Shows

According to a recent study, fossil fuel companies' greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for about 37% of wildfires.

Greenhouse Gas and Fossil Fuel

For the first time, US climate scientists have determined how much the main fossil fuel producers' greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to wildfires.

According to their estimate, which was recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, roughly a third of the land burnt by forest fires in western North America over the previous 40 years was caused by methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the "Big 88" companies.

According to Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the first author of the study, wildfires in the western United States and southern Canada have been getting worse for decades. The wildfires are burning more intensely, for longer periods of time, over wider territories, and at higher elevations.

There is a need to better understand the effect that emissions from the fossil fuel industry have had in changing the wildfire landscape since up until now, the expense of repairing and boosting resilience has primarily been borne by the general population.

Vapor Pressure Deficit

The scientists used climate modeling to conclude that emissions from the Big 88 were responsible for almost half of the observed warming, or an increase in global average temperatures of 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit since the turn of the 20th century, according to CNN.

For the study, the authors took into account all emissions that occur during the various stages of the life cycle of fossil fuels, including extraction, flaring, refinement, and use inside a vehicle.

The amount that the businesses contributed to a rise in the "vapor pressure deficit" (VPD) in the western North America region was then determined by taking into account their impact on global warming.

Climate change's rising temperatures also result in a rise in this indicator of atmospheric hunger because warmer air can store more water vapor.

According to a recent study, there is a clear exponential association between increases in this aridity indicator and the area consumed by forest fires. A greater VPD makes a region more prone to fire.

37% of Wildfires

Combining all of these factors, Dahl's research team discovered that from 1986, the year reliable fire area data became available, and in 2021, emissions from the Big 88 were accountable for 37% of the total area destroyed by wildfires in the western United States and southwestern Canada, covering 19.8 million acres.

The study also discovered that roughly half of the reported increase in VPD since 1901 was caused by emissions from the same industries.

The increase in fire hazards over the previous century has been attributed to a variety of different factors, such as aggressive fire suppression that led to massive buildups of vegetation that would have traditionally burned in smaller, more frequent fires, frequently managed by Indigenous people.

As people have encroached into fire-prone areas, accidental ignitions have also increased.

New Research Impacts

The study adds to a growing number of climate "attribution" studies that have estimated the amounts of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels that have contributed to increases in global temperature, sea level rise, and ocean acidification, PhysOrg reports.