June 8, 2023

Summer Wildfire Outlook

Above-normal significant wildland fire potential is predicted for parts of the Northwest, Upper Midwest, Northeast, and eastern Alaska.

The National Interagency Fire Center, Predictive Services, has issued the latest National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook. This outlook is intended as a decision support tool for wildland fire managers, providing an assessment of current weather and fuels conditions and how these will evolve in the next four months. For June through September 2023, above-normal significant wildland fire potential is predicted for parts of the Northwest, Upper Midwest, Northeast, and eastern Alaska. Below-normal wildland fire potential is predicted for California, the Great Basin, and the Southwest in June and then part of California for the rest of the summer. The rest of the United States has normal wildland fire potential this summer.

Improving Subseasonal Fire Danger Forecast

The increasing complexity and impacts of fire seasons in the United States have prompted efforts to improve early warning systems for wildland fire management. A NIDIS-funded study led by the University of California-Merced demonstrated that subseasonal forecasts of fire danger from an experimental forecast system have significant skill at up to 3-weeks lead time across the contiguous United States. Using hindcasts from 2011 to 2021, results show that while forecast skill degrades with time, statistically significant week 3 correlative skill was found for 76% and 30% of the contiguous U.S. for Energy Release Component and evaporative demand, respectively. This work was supported by grants from NIDIS, USDA, and the National Science Foundation. Learn more >

Western Wildfires Destroying More Homes Per Square Mile Burned

More than three times as many houses and other structures burned in western wildfires in 2010–2020 than in the previous decade, and that wasn’t only because more acreage burned, according to a study led by scientists with the University of Montana and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Across the West, 1.3 structures were destroyed for every 1,000 hectares of land scorched by wildfire from 1999–2009. Between 2010–2020, that ratio increased to 3.4. Causes included climate change, more homes built in flammable ecosystems, and a history of suppressing wildfire. Learn more >

Drought Impacts on PM2.5 (Fine Inhalable Particles) Over the U.S.

A recent study found that decreasing trends in surface mass concentrations of fine aerosol particles were observed in the past ∼30 years in all seasons and regions except for the northwestern U.S. in summer. The increasing trend over the northwestern U.S. in summer during 1988–2018 is primarily due to the positive trend in total carbonaceous aerosol concentrations associated with large fires in drought years. As the frequency, duration, and spatial converge of droughts are expected to increase in a warming climate, the drought-induced air pollution through wildfire could partly offset a reduction of anthropogenic emissions. Learn more >

FEATURED MAPS + DATA

A Smoky May (and Now June) for North America

Early spring brings elevated fire risk to Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the northeastern edge of British Columbia—naturally dry areas that lie in the rain shadow of the Canadian Rockies. There is a period each year, after snow melts but before spring growth begins, that dry forest undergrowth is exposed. But in May 2023, this naturally fire-prone dry period coincided with unusually hot and windy weather, turning what normally would have been small, short-lived fires into huge wildland blazes that raged for several weeks. These articles by NASA Earth Observatory show how the fires, ignited by lightning or human activity, charred more than 1 million hectares (400 square miles) as of May 24 and lofted smoke high into the atmosphere and across North America. The smoke from Western Canada stopped streaming into the U.S. towards the end of the month. But then large fires in Nova Scotia started burning, sending smoke into the northeastern United States.

Fires Scorch Western Canada >

Smoke Fills North American Skies >

A Smoky May for North America >

Raging Fires in Nova Scotia >

Source: NASA Earth Observatory.

June 15, 2023 - 1:00 pm CT

North Central U.S. Climate and Drought Summary and Outlook Webinar