The “specific sequence — of a wet winter followed by warm, hot conditions to dry the fuel out” is what’s needed to spark these larger fires, said Park Williams, a climate scientist and an assistant professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Severe wildfire seasons like the one that has devastated California this fall may occur more frequently because of climate change, says Park Williams, a climate scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
It’s comforting to think of Earth as solid and immovable, but that’s false. The world is vibrating, stretching and compressing. We’re shaking right along with it. “The earth is ringing like a bell all the time,” said Spahr Webb, a seismologist at Columbia University.
A new study has shown that some of Greenland’s meltwater is actually being soaked into porous subsurface ice and held there, at least temporarily. The research could alter calculations of how ongoing melting might fuel global sea-level rise.