Hazy Dayz

[morrison]

Feels like living in a '60s boardroom ashtray here in Squamish.
How are "things" in the city??
I seem to recall a recent post about how Vancouver was'nt to be effected by climate change for some decades? Maybe time for a move.

[Slappy]

What you are experiencing is actually a return to normal, not climate change. You have gotten accustomed to 80 years of fire suppression but now the build up of dead timber has reached a point where we can not easily suppress the fires anymore.

The reality is we live in a part of the world that has an abundance of fuel and goes through 3 months with almost 0 precipitation every year. Wildfires are the natural state of summer in BC.

As for the smoke levels, they often aren't indicative of the fire levels. 2017 was the worst year by a landslide for number of hectares burnt but yet we only had 10 days of light smoke and 2 days of heavy smoke last year. Also smoke travels far and wide, our smoke was effecting the coast of Portugal a few days ago and earlier in the summer we had Siberian smoke effecting us.

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[LeopardSkin]

How are "things" in the city??
I seem to recall a recent post about how Vancouver was'nt to be effected by climate change for some decades? Maybe time for a move.

Vancouver is awesome! Bluebird! I swear the air smells like roses! Grass is green! Nice 25 knots sideoff with nice easy chest high swell. Nice DTL this afternoon! Bonus: chip stand is open!

[morrison]

Bonus: chip stand is open!

Vegan friendly?

[LeopardSkin]

I'm addicted to all this sweet smelling haze. Going to the chip stand to buy fries and a pack of smokes.

[Slappy]

Here is a good info graphic on fire history in Oregon which goes back all the way to 1911. You can see how the natural amount of fires and acres burned dwarfs what we are experiencing now.

With the advent of airplanes and portable chainsaws we got really good at suppressing fires after 1940 and enjoyed an artificial 80 years of relative smoke freedom.

oregonfirehistory.jpg (222.25 KiB) Viewed 9830 times

Bigger Version

[keeldude]

Its got to be a combination of both climate change and fire suppression techniques/management. Its conceivable that a slight climatic temperature rise is pushing us to the limit of what we are able to suppress, so we may be setting up for a number of consecutive bad years to come. And I'm assuming that fire suppression mentality has shifted since 20 years ago, so I wonder if we are letting more burn naturally when it isn't affecting infrastructure and housing? But I can see what you mean. Assuming that plot is reproducible in other states/provinces, it is clear that we have way fewer and smaller fires compared to a century ago. Whereas climate change alone as a predictor would suggest a slow constant rise in fires, rather than what we see in the graph. We may simply be heading back towards a 'normal' amount of fires, but that could well be substantially aggravated by a warmer climate. I'm hesitant to say that fire suppression is the main reason we are where we're at, because surely a warming climate is entangled with our situation. Overall, really interesting infographic that begs for broader analysis.