{"id":241,"date":"2014-02-01T20:52:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T20:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/EH\/?p=241"},"modified":"2014-02-01T20:52:56","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T20:52:56","slug":"fire-dangers-increase-exponentially-with-just-a-small-rise-in-temperature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"Fire Dangers Increase Exponentially with Just a Small Rise in Temperature"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mean to scare anybody,\u201d Andrew Pierce said after he had probably done exactly that.<\/p>\n

Pierce\u2019s new research, which he shared at July\u2019s Hawai`i Conservation Conference in Waikiki, suggests that climate change has resulted in fires now that can spread 11 times faster and are 30 times more intense than those in the 1950s. And that\u2019s just from a two-degree Celsius increase in temperature.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cEven if we think in our brains, \u2018It\u2019s two degrees warmer,\u2019 … we\u2019re going to have exponential feedbacks into fire behavior,\u201d said Pierce, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hawai`i.<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, states across the nation \u2013 Texas, New Mexico, Georgia, Arizona, Utah, Florida and California \u2013 have had some of the largest, if not\u00a0the<\/i>\u00a0largest fires, in their history. The fire trend is due, in large part, to climatic factors, something Pierce has studied extensively in California. More recently, he worked under Creighton Litton of UH\u2019s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, and with Susan Cordell and Christian Giardina of the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, to determine the potential impact of climate change on fires in Hawai`i.<\/p>\n

While waiting for a projection from the Pacific Islands Climate Change Cooperative (PICCC) on what the climate here will be like in 40 to 50 years, Pierce and his team looked to the past and found that climate change has already made the islands more vulnerable to wildfire.<\/p>\n

Hot! Hot! Hot!<\/i><\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Wind, temperature, and humidity all affect fire behavior. Using data collected at the Honolulu International Airport \u2013 one of the few locations in Hawai`i with reliable records going back several decades \u2013 Pierce noted all of the average daily and monthly high temperatures from 1950-1959 and compared them to records from 2000-2009. He also followed changes in relative humidity and wind speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2000s look quite a bit different\u201d from the 1950s, he said. He found that the average temperature in the 2000s was higher than the extreme high temperatures of the 1950s.<\/p>\n

Humidity levels also varied. In the 2000s, the driest months were significantly drier than they were in the 1950s, but the average months are similar to what they were in the 1950s, he said. Wind speeds were higher in the 2000s, but only marginally so.<\/p>\n

Pierce made what was perhaps his most dramatic finding when he compared the number of days where temperatures reached 88 degrees F or higher. In the 1950s, there were only 61 days where the daily high temperature was 88 degrees. In the 2000s, there were 752 days, an increase of more than 1,000 percent. When he included days where high temperatures exceeded 88 degrees, the difference was even greater: 69 days in the 1950s compared to 1,104 days in the 2000s.<\/p>\n

Pierce, who has recently moved to Washington, D.C., said he wasn\u2019t surprised by the differences in temperature and humidity because \u201cwhat I found is essentially the same as what [other researchers] found.\u201d But, he added, \u201cI was surprised by how those seemingly small changes in weather variables produced large changes in fuel moisture levels and the exponentially larger changes in potential fire behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flammability<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The drier and hotter weather has translated into drier landscapes, where \u201cfuels ignite more quickly and release heat faster,\u201d Pierce said.<\/p>\n

Without any data from actual fires in the 1950s and 2000s, Pierce used the Honolulu airport weather data and a fire behavior model to calculate potential fire characteristics from those periods for fires burning under the top 10% most extreme conditions. Model results showed that fires in the 1950s would have spread at a rate of 0.1 meters\/second, while those in the 2000s spread at a rate of 1.1 meters\/second. Fireline intensity, an index of the severity of a fire, went from 274 kW\/meter to 8,674 kW\/meter, and flame length increased fivefold between the two decades, he said.<\/p>\n

Those results do not bode well for Hawai`i\u2019s wild landscapes, native or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe general idea is that air temperatures will be higher with climate change,\u201d Pierce said. And if fires become more frequent and intense as a result, forest restoration will also become more difficult, according to experts. At the 2012 conservation conference, Pierce reported on earlier research showing that repeated fire can drive out a lot of native species, shrubs, in particular. What\u2019s more, he found that dryland areas on Hawai`i island where ungulates had been fenced out to protect native species had higher fuel loads than unfenced areas. Research presented at this year\u2019s conference by the University of Maryland\u2019s Kealoha Kinney also suggests that recurrent fire may reduce the amount of soil phosphorus that is available to plants in dryland systems and thus could alter the pathway of primary succession.<\/p>\n

A presentation by state Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DLNR-DOFAW) forester Sheri Mann provided a glimpse of what fires in today\u2019s climate can do.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2012, three large-scale fires ravaged 3,000 acres on Kaua`i\u2019s west side. The DLNR spent nearly a million dollars controlling them, and even so, they burned more than a thousand acres in the Na Pali-Kona and Pu`u Ka Pele forest reserves and the Kuia Natural Area Reserve, including 149 acres of critical habitat for federally listed species.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only was this one of the largest fire seasons on Kaua`i since the 1960s, but the fire severity was characterized as severe for much of the burned area. These high-fire severities across numerous watersheds and steep gulches above pristine near shore coral reefs have created a significant management challenge for [DOFAW],\u201d Mann stated in her conference abstract.<\/p>\n

The intense flames burned just about everything in their path, leaving vast areas of exposed earth. Although DOFAW started remediating the forested areas last year, Gov. Neil Abercrombie issued in February an emergency executive order allowing the DLNR to immediately expand remediation activities to include ground cover planting and dead tree removal, among other things.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmediate action is needed to stabilize and quickly revegetate denuded slopes and minimize the long-term ecological impacts to the mauka forests and marine ecosystems from heavy rains, downed woody debris and runoff,\u201d according to a press release describing the order.<\/p>\n

Mann agrees with Pierce\u2019s assessment that fires today can be far more intense than they used to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say that the fire intensity is much higher, as well as the fire frequency. In that area there hadn\u2019t been a fire in 60 years,\u201d she told Environment Hawai`i. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt it\u2019s connected to climate change,\u201d she continued, adding that species composition also affects fire intensity.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the invasives are a lot more flammable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Initially, the DLNR estimated it would cost $8 million to restore and remediate the burned timber management areas alone. Those areas consisted mainly of eucalyptus and pine, with some scattered native species, Mann said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were asked to cut that in half,\u201d Mann said, so it \u201cwill be in the neighborhood of $4 million to do what needs to be done. So far, we\u2019ve received less than $1 million. We\u2019ve been promised a million.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so, her agency was able to remove hazardous trees, plant some ground cover, and create fire breaks early on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got lucky because the big rains came really late so we were able to get some vegetation on the ground. The erosion potential was extremely high,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Future Work<\/strong><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

At the time Pierce gave his presentation, Giardina said that they had hoped to be able to show the results of similar modeling, using PICCC\u2019s climate change projections, for the Army\u2019s 80,000 hectare Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) on Hawai`i island, which has a history of burning. With an estimate of what the climate at PTA will be like during the decade 2050-2060, they planned to \u201cillustrate how incremental increases in basic meteorological variables can have non-linear effects on the frequency of hot and dry days, as well as potential intensity of and size of wildfires,\u201d Pierce\u2019s abstract states. It notes that PTA, where the U.S. military conducts live-fire training, is also \u201cwhere 15 native threatened and endangered species stand to be severely and negatively impacted by warming and drying trends and resulting fires forecasted for the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Giardina says his team is just now receiving the data needed for the PTA work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe originally wanted to do current vs. future, but it turned out to be really interesting to go back and see how fire behavior may have already changed dramatically,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

According to University of Hawai`i climatologist Thomas Giambelluca, who also spoke at the conference, the leeward side of the island of Hawai`i may feel climate change impacts sooner than some of the northern islands, such as Kaua`i and O`ahu.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve noticed it\u2019s been very dry in the southern islands. That means that our wintertime systems are not migrating as far south as they were in the past,\u201d and, in fact, they appear to be moving north, he said. \u201cWhether that is connected with climate change, I\u2019m not sure, but it makes sense that it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the windward sides of the islands don\u2019t rely as heavily on those winter storm systems for moisture, they aren\u2019t likely to suffer as much as the leeward sides, Giambelluca said. PTA is located in the saddle of Hawai`i island, between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea.<\/p>\n

Management Tools<\/strong><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

While reversing the current climate trends appears to be near impossible, government agencies, scientific institutions, and non-profit organizations have been working together to provide Hawai`i island, at least, with tools to help identify \u2013 in real time \u2013 areas most vulnerable to burning and to collate fire history data collected by various agencies.<\/p>\n

In his 2012 presentation, Pierce said there\u2019s usually a two-week lag between a hot spell and vegetation die-off. Dead vegetation is \u201ccorrelated with [low] fuel moisture, which is key to the start and spread of fires,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Several years ago, Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science developed a web tool that allows visitors to view satellite images showing areas of live vegetation, dead vegetation, and bare ground.<\/p>\n

In addition, the Hawai\u2018i Wildfire Management Organization (HWMO), a non-profit organization, has helped develop a map identifying the fuel loads across the island. It has also spearheaded the creation of a wildfire history map. Among other things, the map, which is the first of its kind in Hawai`i, will help agencies secure resources for mitigation and post-fire restoration, according to HWMO executive director Elizabeth Pickett, a conference presenter.<\/p>\n

According to Mann, HWMO is working toward developing a statewide map.<\/p>\n

Coupled with climate change information expected from the PICCC, the map will be a useful tool for fire pre-emption, management, and post-fire remediation, Mann said.<\/p>\n

Having data on historic fires, as well as current day information on changes in precipitation, should give managers the ability to predict fire hazards and do pre-fire planning, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I don’t mean to scare anybody,” Andrew Pierce said after he had probably done exactly that. Pierce’s new research, which he shared at July’s Hawai`i Conservation Conference in Waikiki, suggests that climate change has resulted in fires now that can … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,15,31],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change","category-forests","category-september-2013","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}