As Alaska’s fire season comes to a close, more than 3 million acres have burned, fueled in large part by conditions driven by climate change, KTOO reports. On track for the seventh-biggest season since 1950, the 2022 season is notable for the hundreds of thousands of tundra incinerated this year, including the 166,760-acre East Fork Fire. Alaska’s fire season has lengthened over the last 40 years but tundra fires — which themselves release outsized amounts of CO2 — were relatively rare until 2015. “Decades of warmer springs and summers means there is so much more vegetation on the tundra now. From the fires’ perspective, it means there’s much more fuel,” said Rick Thoman, a scientist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at UA-Fairbanks. “Obviously, there’s been a sea change in southwestern Alaska, starting in 2015.” (KTOO; Climate Signals background: Wildfires)
