Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[gallopinggertie]

Hong Kong recently broke its all-time high, during Typhoon Dolphin. Here is an excerpt from an environmental newsletter I receive, describing the day:

“

Dear Reader,

On Sunday, August 9th, the Hong Kong Observatory recorded a temperature of 36.9 C (98.4 F), the highest since records began in 1884.

I’ve often told my friends stateside to imagine Hong Kong’s normal summer climate as “Houston on steroids.” This past Sunday was something else: I was breaking into a sweat just standing in the shade waiting for the bus. There was no breeze, and you could feel the heat radiating into your body, as if you stepped into a sauna. In fact, the “feels like” temperature reached 46 C (114.8 F) — hotter than Houston, Miami, or Phoenix.”

[chubbs]

20 hours ago, GaWx said:

 Per the following reliable and objective source, year 2026 as of week 32 has had the lowest area burnt in North America since 2012 by a good margin vs other years as of the same week (by a third). Also, globally it has been by a large margin the lowest for this point in the year since 2012 as I’ve been posting despite being near the warmest globally along with 2025 being 2nd lowest. My point in posting about 2026 for N.A. and 2026/5 globally is not to say CC is causing a decrease in wildfire activity because I’m not saying that. Instead, my point in posting this is to show that that there isn’t a proven simple relationship between CC and wildfire related activity and that different kinds of wildfire related data from various sources from various periods can be presented in various ways:
 

I don't think area burned is telling you much about CC; because, non-CC human factors are driving the long-term trends. Per Our World in Data, the vast majority of wildfires occur in grassland and savanna in the sub-tropics and tropics, roughly 50% in Africa. Forest burning is a small portion of area burned in all regions. Our World in Data cites  a Science paper that attributes the long-term decrease in area burned to the spread and intensification of agriculture. In Europe and North America, reduction in cropland burned is another important long-term trend.

Have to look at other stats to see the effect of climate change. The blog I linked makes the point that the intensity of the largest fires is increasing due to climate change. Big, intense fires are the most problematic but aren't well captured by the area burned stats. Here's a recent paper that finds that a small number of extreme fires are having an out-sized impact on the forest ecosystem in western and boreal North America.

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aeg5802