Several scientists told the AP that the problem of smoke and wildfires will progressively worsen until the world significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which has not happened despite years of international negotiations and lofty goals.įires in North America are generally getting worse, burning more land. “To some extent they’re just not, they’re not wild. “We can’t really call them wildfires anymore,” Francis said. It's so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis. It’s an ever-moving baseline of worse and worse.” If we continue to warm the planet, we don’t settle into some new state. “Is this a new normal? No, it’s a new abnormal,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said. While many people exposed to bad air may be asking themselves if this is a “new normal,” several scientists told The Associated Press they specifically reject any such idea because the phrase makes it sound like the world has changed to a new and steady pattern of extreme events. Already wildfires are consuming three times more of the United States and Canada each year than in the 1980s and studies predict fire and smoke to worsen. This is just what happens on the West Coast,’ but it’s very much not normal here,” Kuchlbauer said.Īs Earth's climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. “It’s been very apocalyptic feeling, because in California the dialogue is like, ‘Oh, it’s normal. They figured they left wildfire worries behind in California, but a Canada that's burning from sea to warming sea brought one of the more visceral effects of climate change home to places that once seemed immune. Bomba had deja vu from San Francisco, where the air was so thick with smoke people had to mask up. Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college graduate in San Diego. It was smoke from wildfires, the odor of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago.
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