EXTREME WEATHERWILDFIRESUNDERLYING SCIENCE
No, Mainstream Media, “Extreme” Wildfires Are Not on The Rise Due to Climate Change
By
Anthony Watts
June 25, 2024
This week a new study was published in the Nature journal Ecology and Evolution titled “Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth.” The study claims that wildfires are on the increase due to climate change. Predictably, the mainstream media jumped all over this with headlines similar to what you see above from CBS News. However, the paper is untrue as it is self-falsifying because it doesn’t even use the minimum 30 year period required for a climatic data comparison. Further, the claims are not supported by science in other sources of data, and other publications.
First, the study itself says it only uses 21 years worth of satellite data, saying:
Climate change is exacerbating wildfire conditions, but evidence is lacking for global trends in extreme fire activity itself. Here we identify energetically extreme wildfire events by calculating daily clusters of summed fire radiative power using 21 years of satellite data…
A minimum of 30 years of data is needed before it can be called a climate comparison. This has been defined for decades. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defines climate as “…the average weather conditions for a particular location and over a long period of time.” To create a climate record, 30 years of weather data is averaged to create a “normal” climate expectation for a location or region.
https://climaterealism.com/2024/06/no-mainstream-media-extreme-wildfires-are-not-on-the-rise-due-to-climate-change/
