Climate change narrowing gap between fire seasons in eastern Australia and western North America

Extended fire seasons are increasingly overlapping between eastern Australia and western North America due to climate change, according to a study conducted by researchers from Australia and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ).

“Due to climate change, however, the fire seasons in both regions are getting longer. This means there is now a greater overlap of fire seasons, which could place greater pressure on the sharing of resources,” the paper, published in the journal Earth’s Future, noted.

The longer fire seasons thereby overlap each other, impacting the cross-border fire mitigating arrangements between Canada, the United States and Australia.