Humans are making wildfires worse, but here’s what we can do about it

A wildfire or wildland fire is a fire in an area of combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or rural area. Depending on the type of vegetation where it occurs, a wildfire can also be classified more specifically as a brush fire, bushfire, desert fire, forest fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, vegetation fire, and veld fire.

Climate change is a major contributing factor in the uptick of firestorms. As our planet continues to warm and weather patterns become more unstable—and as humans keep developing more land—experts expect that devastating fires like those currently searing across California’s wine country will become the norm, not the exception. But the summer that followed was oppressively hot—the hottest on record in parts of Northern California that are currently burning, according to NOAA’s National Centers For Environmental Information:

Since the winter rains ended, much of California has been bone dry. Summer and fall are traditionally dry seasons in California, but this year has been drier than usual: 

Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University, wrote for a recent study.n