[HN Gopher] Wildfires in Canada are creating their own weather s...
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Wildfires in Canada are creating their own weather systems, experts
say
Author : colinprince
Score : 68 points
Date : 2021-07-27 20:47 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| Diederich wrote:
| Y'all might already know about them, but here are some links I've
| collected to monitor smoke.
|
| https://fire.airnow.gov/
|
| https://zoom.earth/
|
| https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/information/firemap.aspx
|
| https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2020-09-10...
|
| https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...
| swader999 wrote:
| In the post above the fire kml files that plot the active fire
| hot spots from satellites in Google earth is hard to beat:
| https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/active_fire/
|
| You get near real time, auto refresh and very good accuracy
| with ability to zoom in.
| xrendan wrote:
| There's also https://firesmoke.ca
| brailsafe wrote:
| We haven't had rain in a hilarious amount of time for the PNW,
| and getting more heat warnings. We're used to summers with a
| fairly consistent ~20deg and some rain here and there. What we've
| been getting since mid-June is 26deg+ (outside of the crazy week
| of over 40deg). In some cases, people are literally needing to
| water the rainforest.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I think it was Nova on PBS that did an episode on studying
| weather systems created by fires, focusing on fires on the US
| Pacific coast.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| > The fire creates the storm, and then the storm creates
| lightning, which can cause more fires
|
| > That runaway feedback is the dangerous part.
|
| This is the second year I've heard the term
| pyrocumulus/pyrocumulonimbus so prominently in relation to the
| Sierras in California. If this happens more frequently, we might
| lose a _lot_ of forest. It seems like that would accelerate the
| effects of climate change... which would also amplify the
| frequency of these events.
| RadioactiveMan wrote:
| Would we really lose them? My understanding is that, after a
| fire, a forest experiences very rich growth, especially of
| plants that don't grow much under the shade of old trees, which
| are good food and cover for many animals.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Right, but it takes ages for forests to grow, and that period
| is plenty time for CO2 emissions to run-away from us.
| micro_cam wrote:
| These current fires are much more destructive because of a
| combination of the extreme conditions, a dense under story
| from fire suppression and lots of standing dead wood from
| beetle kill etc.
|
| So ideally for a forest you would have small fires come
| through regularly and clean up the under brush but leave a
| fair number of large mature trees standing leading to open
| fire resistant mature forest.
|
| With these large super destructive fires that wipe out
| everything you get slower reseeding which can let invasives
| weeds take hold. And you get dense stands of young trees and
| brush which are less fire resistant than mature forests.
|
| Partial solutions include controlled burns in the wet season
| and thinning where you shoot to leave the large mature trees
| but reduce fuels. (This isn't always commercially viable
| though developing wood products that can be made from small
| trees or even brush harvested during thinning is an
| interesting area.)
| Arrath wrote:
| > With these large super destructive fires that wipe out
| everything you get slower reseeding which can let invasives
| weeds take hold. And you get dense stands of young trees
| and brush which are less fire resistant than mature
| forests.
|
| If you're real unlucky an above average wet season after a
| super destructive fire will cause untold amounts of topsoil
| erosion and damage, impacting the follow on reseeding even
| more.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Burning forests will increase the CO2 level, but since there is
| no "local global warming", the effect is diluted over the whole
| planet, and I'd be very surprised if the feedback effect is at
| all significant.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Yes, this is what will happen in many areas.
| slownews45 wrote:
| There was much much more fire in the past. California is a
| terrible example if you want to show natural / historic rates
| of fire. I'm sure native american's burned huge quantities for
| lots of reasons as well?
| beowulfey wrote:
| If you want to make statements like this on HN, please back
| them up with sources.
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(page generated 2021-07-27 23:00 UTC)