11000 lightning strikes in 3 days, California wildfire spreading! Global warming is an accomplice

In the past week, thousands of residents have been forced to leave their homes as wildfires continue to spread in Northern California. They are also accompanied by heat waves, intermittent blackouts, particulate air and an epidemic of the new coronavirus that has not yet been contained. < p > < p > in the last three days alone, California recorded more than 11000 lightning strikes, causing more than 360 fires across the state, of which 26 are already considered major fires. The California government said there were 6754 wildfires in the state this year, compared with about 4000 in the same period last year. The total area of the fire is more than 350000 acres, about 1416 square kilometers, which is about 1 / 11 of the total area of Beijing. < p > < p > at present, many mountain fire areas caused by lightning are still out of control, only 0% – 5% of the fire momentum is under control. Two important cities in Northern California, San Francisco and San Jose, are surrounded by large fire areas. However, apart from the occasional smog drifting to the city center, the hot weather leading to insufficient power supply and occasional power failure in some areas, people’s lives have not been affected for the time being. On August 18, California’s Death Valley National Park recorded the highest temperature of 54.4 ℃. If the national weather service is correct, it will be the highest temperature recorded on earth since 1931 and the third highest temperature ever recorded on earth. For a long time, the consensus of the scientific community is that the earth is experiencing unusual climate change, but the academic community generally refuses to link single extreme events with climate change, because it is difficult for people to find the law and establish causal relationship, and many disasters are actually caused by human negligence. However, in the face of increasingly frequent extreme natural disasters, some scientists have begun to waver, trying to find out whether there is a link between the two by studying historical data. < / P > < p > the team collected the surface temperature, precipitation and wildfire weather index of California every autumn, including humidity, temperature, 24-hour precipitation and wind speed. Only by sorting out the data, we can find that the average temperature has increased by 0.3 ℃ every 10 years in the past 40 years, and the average precipitation has decreased by 12.03 mm. < p > < p > then they used the data to build climate models to simulate the possibility of wildfires. The results showed that the possibility of mountain fire increased obviously and the risk doubled under the combined action of high temperature and low precipitation. David romps, director of the Berkeley Center for atmospheric science, said: ‘we are in a world where climate has changed radically. Today’s average daily temperature in Berkeley is 5-7 ℃ C higher than in the early 20th century. < p > < p > ROMs’ paper published in Science in 2014 concluded that every 1 ° C increase in average temperature could increase the number of lightning in the United States by 12%, and lightning is one of the most common factors causing wildfires. < / P > < p > “are heat waves, lightning and dryness affected by global warming? I can simply answer: absolutely, “ROMs told MIT Technology Review. “As for global warming, has global warming made the heat waves hotter, Lightning more and vegetation drier? Very likely. ” < / P > < p > some climatologists have pointed out that the recent occurrence of thunderstorms in Northern California is very rare and lasts a long time. Strictly speaking, they are extreme weather. So it’s hard to judge whether climate change is responsible for the fires. However, for the attribution study of extreme weather, there is evidence that global warming intensifies the degree of heat waves, which creates conditions for the violent combustion and rapid spread of wildfires. < / P > < p > in other words, assuming that some wildfires could have been avoided, even if we don’t know if climate change is the culprit, we can at least be sure that it is an accomplice that can’t escape. No matter how much we deceive ourselves, we can’t change this fact.