Thread by @paldhous

THREAD: I've been talking to the climate and fire scientists who know better than anyone about what's happening on the West Coast. They are deeply upset, but not surprised. And they warn that this is not the "new normal." It's likely to get worse.
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

2/ The numbers are astonishing. In California, where I live, we've blasted through the record for area burned in a single year.
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

3/ But what's so alarming about 2020 isn't the total area burned. It's that this happened so quickly in less than a month. The fires now include the first, third, and fourth largest in state history.
fire.ca.gov/media/11416/to…
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

4/ The intensity with which some of these fires have taken off has astonished even seasoned fire-watchers. Here's the Creek Fire, exploding from nothing to a catastrophe that required 200 people to be rescued by military helicopter
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

5/ Here are major fire incidents in California since 2010, as circles scaled by the area burned. The overlapping large circles in the past month are unprecedented.
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

6/ There are no easy fixes. And we will probably have to fight fire with fire, vastly increasing prescribed burns to reduce the fuel load in unnaturally dense forests.
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

7/ Before the European settlement of California a greater area burned on an annual basis than this year. But these were much lower-intensity fires that left the biggest trees alive, rather than destroying everything in their path.
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

8/ Getting back to anything like a "natural" fire regime won't be easy, and it won't be comfortable. "Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period," this paper warned back in 2007.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

9/ But one way or another, more fires are coming, for good or bad. There is no going back to the West Coast we once knew. "We are going to have to embrace more fire on the landscape," @Weather_West told me.
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…

10/ @Weather_West also spoke of the grief we're all feeling on the West Coast. "This is horrible. It is very hard to process. Personally, I’m exhausted by all of this."
buzzfeednews.com/article/petera…