Tim Brown, research professor at Desert Research Institute and director at the Western Regional Climate Center, joins Cheddar News to discuss the environmental impact of recent wildfires. 

Between Bells

Wildfires Sweep Through Western States

between 1000 baker machado and new york. Several wildfires are continuing to wreak havoc on landscapes all over the Western United States right now, most of the fires are burning in texas in Arizona, A state of emergency has even been declared in New Mexico. That's where the governor there is saying about 20 active wildfires are blazing through 16 of the state's 33 counties. So joining us now to discuss is Tim Brown, research professor of climatology over at the University of Arizona and director of Western Regional Climate Center as well. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. So walk us through sort of what's driving these wildfires because this is really happening a lot earlier than we typically see them. Yes, Well, april has been warm and dry and droughts actually been ramping up in the region since last summer. So most of the area has been in severe and worse drought levels. Temperature has been much above normal during the past month and this is actually climatologically the windy season. So we are seeing wind events. Yeah. And some of the firefighters in New Mexico, I was reading, think they maybe were able to catch a little bit of a break yesterday because the wind wasn't as bad. Uh, you know, what's the progress in containing these? Does it make it more difficult because a lot of these, these fires are merging together here for these firefighters. Well, there are, it's my understanding there's now over 2000 firefighters working in the region and it might be uh, for some of these events could be up to a month, maybe even by the end of May before they could be fully contained. So they're doing their best they can. But obviously there's some places here with complex terrain that they'll have to deal with and like say, plus the environment itself, the wind and the weather certainly is a major driver of fire. I hate to ask the obvious question here, but how much of a role as climate change playing in all of this, given the fact that it seems like all of these sorts of terrible whether events that we're experiencing are starting earlier and earlier for pretty much everything now. Right. Well, so droughts across the west, which is what we're facing now, they're very common and in fact we have pretty good records of drought that goes back a couple of 1000 years, but what has changed in recent decades is that these are now considered to be hot droughts and that is the warming temperatures from climate change is enhancing the drought by making the soil and atmosphere even drier. So while climate change itself does not cause these wildfires, it can certainly exacerbate the conditions to make them worse along with the availability of the vegetation and of course human activity as well. So really all three of those factors are the confluence of of fire and this isn't by the way, even fire season. I mean, I grew up in colorado, I remember, you know, really hot dry summers where you would see tons of wildfires. Is there a concern then? What will, what wildfire season will look like if we're getting this already in april? Right. So in some parts of the Southwest, actually in New Mexico for example, it's not unusual in april to have six large wildfires. I think what's really unusual here is how much of the activity is happening at once. And so this seasonal outlooks, there'll be a new one that's going to come out here in about a week. But yeah, right now they're projecting uh continued above normal fire potential. That is significant fire potential really through oh least june. And then by the time summer comes, there's a lot of thinking that these fires will expand up north up to the Canadian border, especially east of the Rockies for the rest of the West. We need to wait and see just a little bit longer how that's gonna work out. And is that going to be a concern health wise for individuals regarding air quality? So is that gonna be concern for most people in the rocky mountain west about the summer and the and the air that they're breathing here. Yeah, absolutely. So the smoke seasons, we've been talking about fire season, but we're having smoke seasons as well. And this is definitely impacting a lot of folks, we've been having many, many days now in the past few years where smoke has been at levels that are unhealthy for individuals. So folks should really, they could find themselves and elevated poor quality, poor air quality conditions. So they need to be aware of that. And even drivers, they're out on the roads, they need to be careful when they're driving through some of these very thick smoke events. Is there anything that people can do to prepare? I mean obviously there's, there's obviously minimal things that people can do. But is there anything that anybody can sort of prepare for their homes or for themselves at least for the upcoming few months, which seemed to be pretty, pretty tough here? Well for fire itself. Yes, there are some actually simple things they can do to mitigate. Um It could be things like just make sure that you don't have wood stacked next to your, your home or to make sure if you can, you know, clear away some vegetation that's highly flammable. Give the firefighters some room to be able to work in that area. There are lots of mitigation strategies that can be done to help protect homes. Um but but these need to begin now and not at the last minute, once the fires in the neighborhood. So true, tim Brown. Such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much sir. Research professor of climatology at the University of Arizona and also director of the Western Regional Climate Center joining us here on cheddar news