What the US Forest Service once characterized as a four-month-long fire season starting in late summer and early autumn now stretches into six to eight months of the year. Wildfires are starting earlier, burning more intensely and scorching swaths of land larger than ever before. Risks for large, catastrophic fires like the Camp fire that leveled the town of Paradise in 2018 are rising…
More than half of the 20 largest fires in California history burned in just the last four years. Eight of the top 20 fires in Oregon occurred in that time frame too. Last year, Arizona saw the most acres burned in its history. California’s August Complex fire, which consumed more than 1m acres alone, became the first-ever giga-fire in 2020. The Dixie fire this year came close to becoming the second, burning through more than 963,200 acres…
The conditions that set the stage for a staggering escalation in wildfire activity in the American west are layered and complicated, but the climate emergency is a leading culprit…
There are still solutions and mitigations that could slow the shift in intensity – but researchers say that window is closing.
“The trends that are driving this increase in fire risk, fire size, fire severity over time are continuing – that’s climate change.”
Until and unless people press politicians to act upon climate change, reversing human-made trends decades in the making, the dangers to whole communities, whole states, regional disasters, will continue and increase.
Eideard 
In early 2019-2020, Australia experienced the most severe wildfire in its history. Smoke found across the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile has had an unexpected impact on marine life.
https://presstories.com/2021/10/03/how-australias-mega-fires-created-the-microalk-continent-rts-ch/
A Study a few days ago the scientific journal Nature published that these fumes caused an impressive amount of microalgae to bloom. Phytoplankton, as they are called, in an area larger than Australia, in the middle of the Southern Ocean, is also known as the “Antarctic Ocean”.
Study: “Widespread phytoplankton blooms triggered by 2019–2020 Australian wildfires” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03805-8
“House committee hears testimony about wildland firefighting workforce reforms” https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/10/27/house-committee-hears-testimony-about-wildland-firefighting-workforce-reforms/
Much of the two and a half hours of Wednesday’s hearing before the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Natural Resources about wildland firefighter pay, devolved into rants about vaccine mandates and forest management. However, quality time was still spent on enhancing the pay and benefits of firefighters and generally improving the working conditions and management of the fire suppression work force. The entire hearing can be viewed on YouTube [link].
“Legislation announced to raise pay for federal wildland firefighters to at least $20 an hour” https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/10/19/legislation-announced-to-raise-pay-for-federal-wildland-firefighters-to-at-least-20-an-hour/
“Survey identifies prescribed fire training needs in the Southeast” https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/11/03/survey-identifies-prescribed-fire-training-needs-in-the-southeast/
“Pueblos in New Mexico turn to goats for fire management : As climate change exposes wildfire risks, tribes by the Rio Grande experiment with a four-legged technique to nibble away fuels.” https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-wildfire-pueblos-in-new-mexico-turn-to-goats-for-fire-management
Greeks fear megafires could be new normal for Med (BBC) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59075043
This summer alone Greece was hit by thousands of wildfires, fanned by its worst heatwave in decades. Turkey, Italy and Spain all witnessed dramatic fires in recent months and the fire on the Greek island of Evia was the biggest in Greece since records began.
What happened on Evia was a megafire, an intense conflagration, which took almost two weeks to bring under control.
With more heatwaves forecast for future summers, there are fears that megafires could become the new normal.
“Factors including extreme winds, topography and vegetation influenced the severity of burns from Oregon’s devastating 2020 megafires” https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/949828
First-of-its-kind study examines the influence of factors that contributed to patterns of high-burn severity during the 2020 megafires in Oregon (link)