Extended periods of hot weather and drought create ideal conditions for hard-to-fight forest fires.
Although climate models predict that such weather conditions generated by human-caused global warming will increase the incidence of wildfires, recent wildfires cannot be blamed exclusively—or even primarily—on global warming: Weather-driven conditions conducive to forest fires have existed for millennia as a result of naturally occurring climate cycles.
For example, studies have shown that over the past 3,000 years, severe fires in the Western U.S. occurred during the 1800s and during the Medieval Warm Period (950–1250 AD), and some of the least destructive happened in the mid-20th century and during the Little Ice Age (1400–1700 AD).
Natural climate variability clearly modified historical fire severity, but landscape changes and similar human…
