Impacts of Climate Change on Wildfires – NBC Bay Area

As we all know, the past few years has brought California devastating wildfire seasons that turned deadly. In 2020 over 4 million acres were burned in California and this set our newest record for the amount of acres burned in one year.

Look at the data below and you’ll see the impacts of climate change. From 1985 to 2015 the cumulative forest area burned is near 25 million acres. If climate change was not happening this number would be much lower at around 11 million acres.

So what could this mean going forward? The Sierra would average 75 more days of wildfire season, the acres burned could stay two times higher, longer fire seasons and also more intense fires.

You can find out more about how the Bay Area climate is changing in a series of stories the Microclimate Weather Team worked on across the Bay Area.