West's Wildfires Linked to Global Warming

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drought4nov04,1,7556560.story
THE NATION
West's Wildfires Linked to Global Warming
A study contradicts the belief that such blazes are unnatural, citing similar outbreaks during a drought in the Middle Ages.
By Bettina Boxall
Times Staff Writer

November 4, 2004

The raging Western wildfires of recent years have often been blamed on management practices that promoted dense, overpacked forests. But a new study indicates global warming may be the main culprit.

Challenging the conventional wisdom that today's severe wildfires are unnatural and unprecedented, researchers have found that parts of the West experienced destructive blazes during a warm, drought-plagued period in the Middle Ages.

The linkage suggests that as the climate warms, damaging wildfires will continue to strike the West. "If we are just at the beginning of dramatic warming … we can simply expect larger, more severe fires," said Grant A. Meyer, a co-author of the study, published in today's journal Nature.

Meyer and two other researchers sifted through soil deposits as old as 8,000 years in ponderosa pine forests in central Idaho, finding a record of severe fire activity during the 400-year-long Medieval Warm Period from about 950 to 1350.<snip>