(Large fires in Alaska. Image source: Lance-Modis)
A week after a record heatwave set off highest ever temperatures in Alaska, massive forest fires are blanketing vast areas of wilderness.
More than 80 fires are now raging across the state. The largest include the Lime Hills Fire at 154,000 acres and the Moore Creek Fire at 126,00o acres. In total, nearly 400,000 acres have burned so far this summer. For reference, an average full fire season in the US results in around 3 million acres burned. So the 400,000 acres for Alaska alone represents an abnormally large area burned, especially so early in the fire season and for a region at or above the Arctic Circle.
Like Colorado, where blazes resulted in record damage during June, the largest of the Alaskan fires, Lime Hills, currently threatens a local community. As of Tuesday, the fire had moved to within a half mile of the town which is located on the upper Stoney River just west of Fairbanks. About 70 firefighters are working to ensure no structures are taken by the blaze.
Though not as hot as last week, temperatures still remain in the range of record heat for interior Alaska with some regions Tuesday showing temperatures near 80 degrees (Fahrenheit). Daily record highs for this area range in the high 70s for this time of year. So record-breaking temperatures have become a day-to-day event for this Arctic region.
Fires in Alaska are a direct result of the extreme record high temperatures there. And these temperatures are also linked to a long-period warming trend caused by human-spurred global warming. Increasing heat, dryness and wildfires in vulnerable regions are just one result of the climate change caused by an excessive and continuous burning of fossil fuels. May of 2013 was the 3rd hottest on record, according to NOAA’s National Climate Data Center. Overall, temperatures are about .8 degrees Celsius above temperatures when climate records started in the 1880s. This difference is equivalent to that caused by the Little Ice Age, but on the side of hot.
Also in May, global atmospheric CO2 levels hit a record 400 parts per million. This level of Greenhouse gas is enough to raise Earth’s temperatures another 2-3 degrees Celsius long-term or about half the difference between now and the last Ice Age, but also on the side of hot. Long term results of 400 ppm CO2 also include a 75 foot rise in sea level. Unfortunately, due to a failure by the world’s leaders to enact appropriate CO2 reduction policies, CO2 levels are set to rise to around 550 parts per million by mid-century, enough to bake in a total temperature increase of around 7 degrees Celsius long-term. A virtual fire age.
Between now and then, and without proper policy measures aimed at reducing the damage, we can expect gradual but continually increasing global temperatures with increasing instances of extreme weather events.
The current Arctic heatwave is just one example of the strange climate we are creating. Let us hope that policy makers have gotten the message. We need to get to work before we set off even more dangerous events.
Links:
Crews Battle Wildfires Across Alaska
Heat Wave Sends Temperatures in Alaska to 94 Degrees
Unprecedented West Fork Fires Explode to 60,000 Acres
What Does a World at 400 PPM CO2 Look Like?
robertscribbler 
seemorerocks
/ June 26, 2013I have only just discovered your site. It is really important that somebody is bearing witness to what is going on, especially in the Arctic – from DownUnder
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Bruce Taylor
/ June 30, 2013It is both amazing and scary the information we are NOT getting. But it’s the same problem when, in 2001, trying to find information in regard to a novella I helped write (“Stormworld”co-authored with Brian Herbert) on the subject of global warming. I finally discovered the BBC and began to get the picture of what was REALLY going on and just how bad the problem was. We set the story finally in 2019, never believing the extreme weather we depicted in the story could possibly happen any earlier than that. We were off by SIX years! The only question
I have now is this: as with the film “The Day After Tomorrow”, our story was also based on the idea of a catastrophic melt of Greenland
which dumped so much fresh water into the North Atlantic that it caused the deep ocean current to fail hence disrupting the heat transfer of said current hence plunging the Northern Hemisphere into another “Little Ice Age”. Is that scenario still a possibility? Have there been any changes in the deep ocean current(s)?
Thank you for this site and all the links
to what looks like accurate data. That is very much appreciated and may I share this site and information with others?
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robertscribbler
/ July 1, 2013The Gulf Stream has been steadily weakening since the 1990s, though a complete cessation of that current is highly unlikely. We also have a slowing of deep ocean currents beneath Antarctica due to a new and spreading fresh water cap there.
This particular ‘Warm Storm’ isn’t yet so catastrophic as the one you seem to have indicated in your book. Nor do I think it’s at all certain we’ll have a complete melt-out of ice this summer. That said, the risks are there.
Please feel free to share as you like.
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