Lives lost, forests burned, billions of dollars in damages. We are facing a future filled with flames, Wildfire Researcher Dr. Mike Flannigan is trying to figure out how to stop it. We talk climate change, fire tornadoes and historic wildfires
Interview with Wildfire Researcher Dr. Mike Flannigan
Speakers
Nick VinZant: Profoundly Pointless Host
Dr. Mike Flannigan: Wildfire Researcher
Nick VinZant 0:13
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, fire tornadoes and Nicolas Cage
Dr. Mike Flannigan 0:23 on average, we're going to see a lot more fire. And the thing is, there's no vaccine for wildfires, we have to learn to live with these fires, and associated smoke. These are high intensity fires. And flames can be hundreds of feet in size. And these are the ones that are possible to extinguish. And this is where we're moving. Because you know, people say, hey, if we keep on getting more fire, the trees won't be able to handle it. And they're absolutely right, the trees will disappear. But what will replace it shops or grass. So in some respects, we're moving to a grass world as we see more and more fire, grass is gonna be the winner, and grass can burn every year.
Nick VinZant 1:05 I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it, it really helps us out. So I don't want to sound dramatic. Because I think if you turn on the news, if you look at social media, the world is ending every day. Right? But the more I talked to our first guests, the more I learned about this subject, the more I just kept thinking, Man, this sounds really bad. We should really be doing something about this. Because it is something that we've heard a lot about recently, historic fire after historic fire lives lost forest burn billions of dollars in property damage. But there is a solution. It's just going to take a lot of work. Our first guest is an expert in wildland fires, and what we can do about them. This is Dr. Mike Flannigan, when we look at wildfires now I keep hearing this, it's historic, its historic, are these really historic? Or is this the new normal for us?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 2:13 Now, I would use the term unprecedented, as well as historic for some regions like California and Australia should go back in time before our modern records. There are indications that, you know, the landscape did burn frequently. But, you know, there was a lot of grass in the valley. It's now a culture. So it's kind of comparing apples to oranges. So yes, these are, we're in uncharted territory. You know, some people like to say new normal, I don't like that, because there's nothing normal about this new reality, perhaps things are going to get worse and worse. So that's why I don't like normal,
Nick VinZant 2:54 when you say things are going to get worse and worse kind of helped me understand in terms of Alright, one, everything's fine. teen, this is the worst it could possibly be. Like, where are we at right now? Where do you think we're gonna be in the foreseeable future?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 3:11 Where we're, you know, we're probably seven or eight. But there's, there's room in the scale may go beyond 10. That's what we're afraid of. And I don't want to give the impression now, like, there was terms like apocalyptic in the newspapers, when those orangey reddish guys from all the smoke. Not every year is gonna be like this year, okay, some years are gonna be cooler, some years gonna be wider. But on average, we're going to see a lot more fire. And the thing is, there's no vaccine for wildfires. We have to learn to live with these fires, and associated smoke. So you know, why am I saying all this? Well, the research that I have done, and May my colleagues have found a relationship between temperature and wildfire. And here I'm talking about the warmer get the more fire we see. And people say, Well, why is temperature so important? And here I'm not talking about individual fire like the campfire or the Creek Fire, where wind and the day to day weather plays a major role. I'm talking about a larger area, like California, over a longer period of time, like a month or fire season. And there's kind of three reasons and you may find out fire people love threes. The warmer it gets, the longer the fire season. The fire season stirred earlier this year in California, as it did in Australia. Last year's fire season for them. The warmer get the more lightning you see the more lightning you see the more lightning talk fires. You see, enlightening played a major role in the Australian fires. And in this historic unprecedented California wildfire season. The third reason is probably the most convoluted the probably the most important as that Pure warms. And this summer, it was a record breaking heat wave for the southwestern United States, including California, the more efficient The air is, it's sucking the moisture out of fuel. And unless there's some rain to compensate for this drying effect, our fuels will be drier. And this is critical because the drier the field, the easier it is for fires to start, whether it's by a lightning strike, or by a campfire, it's just easier to start and spread. And it means more fuels dried out, that means there's more fuel to burn more energy to be released. higher intensity fires, like those Pyro cumulonimbus, we've seen fire generated thunderstorms, very intense, erratic, dangerous, these are difficult to impossible to extinguish. So as we continue to warm, our fuels are going to be dryer or lightning. And California has moved to a year long fire season. So that's why we say we're going to see more fire in the future.
Nick VinZant 6:03 And just to kind of clarify, when you say fuels we're talking about basically like, plants and trees, right?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 6:10 Yeah, so you know, when a fire starts, I'll use the forest as an example to start from the forest floor. And there's usually a bad needles leaves, it's dead stock, that's where the fire typically start. And so that can carry up into the shrubs. And then right into the trees, particularly the conifer trees in Scotland. And then the Crown's of the trees, the tops of the trees get engaged. And we call these crown fires, these are high intensity fires. And flames can be hundreds of feet inside. And these are the ones that are possible to extinguish directly through retardant or foam or water from planes. Even though it makes a great pitcher. It's like spitting on a campfire. If the fire is large, and the conditions are dry, and the fuels are dry, the only tool fire magic has called a burnout operation, which is very effective, you get in front of the wildfire, where it's going to go, you start a new fire, but backing into the winds, what's lower intensity, and you can manage it, and the wildfire and the burnout meet, it's got more fuel. So very effective, the problem becomes, if the winds are shifting, then it's a dangerous operation because the fire you start may slip to a head of fire, the higher intensity fire that you may no longer be able to control. So now you've got a wildfire and new fire that you can't control. It's fire management's challenging. And it's gonna be even more challenging in the future with climate change it climate change is definitely the cause, right? When we look at this, is there any serious debate about this? Or have basically all the researchers like yourself kind of coalesced around this idea? Like, yeah, this is climate change is fueling this, I'd say there's consensus, there are still some people who do not believe that climate change, I want to make this distinction clear. It's not solely climate change. But climate change is the biggest player, here we go, the way we manage our landscapes does play a role. And I'll give you an example. There's been a drought in California, a multi year drought, and millions of trees have died. And sometimes this happens with outbreaks of path. And so you now have large volumes of dead fuel, a fire come through, it leads to these high intensity fires. So managing your landscape does play a role as well. A research done by some of my American colleagues suggests that about 55% of the increases we've seen, are responsible to climate change. So it's the biggest player. Now, to give you perspective, what's going on in the western United States, every burn has quadrupled, that have increased by a factor of four since the 70s. California has increased by a factor of five since the 70s. So we're on this trajectory of more and more fire, and I don't see anything changing. And you know, if you are downtown Los Angeles or downtown San Francisco, the likelihood of your place burning down to a wildland fire is almost zero. But that smoke from these fires can smoky out for weeks and air quality can go you know down the tube. And the more we know about wildland fire smoke, the more we know it's really bad for our health. Is there anything we can do there any good news? Absolutely, that there are things we can do. So, you know, maybe I'll start here with you know, whether you're in Australia, the Arctic, the Amazon or California, there's three ingredients for wildfire to Know how you need these three things. It's just like the recipe, the stuff that burns the fuel, needles, the leaves, the shrubs, the trees, how much you have, what type, how dry it is all important aspects of that feel factor. Second, ignition. We've talked a bit about lightning, but people also start fires. And the third is hot, dry when the weather or conducive fire weather dry and windy will work as well. And you get all three and you get a wildfire.
Nick VinZant 10:32 So what can we do?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 10:33 Well, first thing, from a climate change perspective, we can stop emitting greenhouse gases, or at least reduce greenhouse gas emission. But the thing is, even if we stop today, emitting greenhouse gases, we're the earth is gonna continue to warm for 50 years or more because of the lags in our climate system, particularly the ocean. So we're going to continue to warm. So taking away the climate change aspect, we really can't do much about the day to day weather, look at the ignition, we really can't do much about lightning. But human caused fires, we can do something about and we can reduce every human caused fires preventable. And a number of these fires in California, Oregon, this year and other years have been started by either people directly, or our infrastructure power lines, for example. These are preventable, we can bury powerlines Yes, is expensive. But how expensive was it? What's the cost of burning downtown like paradise, California, all human caused fires are preventable. Things like building materials, and how you plan your community. You want fire breaks around the edge of your community, whether it's golf courses, baseball, diamonds, green grass is a very effective firebreak. So you can plan it so that you have this buffer zone where it's unlikely to burn or if it does burn is lower intensity and fire management. So around communities, you can reduce the risk by reducing the fuel load, or the fuel type if it's particularly flammable. And you can do this with prescribed burning, cutting down trees, you can use goats and other animals for grazing just to reduce the amount of available fuel for that fire. Now, there's been a lot said about prescribed burning. And yes, it does produce smoke. And but the argument is a little smoke now versus a lot of small player. But in those areas that are particularly sensitive. Like some of the parks, where you have a lot tourists, you can use mechanical treatments and reduce the field load.
Nick VinZant 12:51 When you talk about like, you know, the development aspect of it, are we building in places that we really shouldn't be building? Or are we just getting bigger, and this is kind of the natural process of that
Dr. Mike Flannigan 13:03 It's both there was something that LA Times about three or four years ago that we're continuing to build in wild lands and fire prone lands. And and they kind of used the analogy of building in flood plains. And it's not a complete analogy. But we are building in areas that we should think twice about a bridges, what we call the wildland urban interface. That's, you know, at the edge of communities, you're in the woods, and I've lived places like that. And it's gorgeous. You've got trees, you got wildlife, you got flowers, wild flowers. But the problem is that some of these places, you're at much greater risk from wildfire, unless you take some precautions. You have a much riskier environment and insurance companies. if they haven't already, they will say, No, we will not insure your home for a wildfire. Because the risk is too high.
Nick VinZant 13:59 Is there a general way that a fire is going to spread? Like is there a pattern to it? Or does it just burn everything around it?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 14:07 So it depends on how dry the fuels are, as to know where where it will spread, how intense it will be. And the wind helps the wind and topography help dictate where it will spread. So if you were a grass field, and the grass is all bad, it's yellow. You drop a match, there's no wind, it would be a circle. It just spread out in all directions. But once the wind starts to blow, well that takes the shape by the lips. And the most intense part is that the head of that fire, and that's the directional spreads. We have miles of fire growth that were quite well most circumstances so we can have a pretty good idea. If you have a weather forecast. We know what the topography is and we know the fuels.
Nick VinZant 14:56 Do fires generally like to go uphill. downhill,
Dr. Mike Flannigan 15:01 generally uphill. And that's because the winds generally during the day met the fact that burning period, normally is the winds go up Valley upslope. And that's why canyons are so dangerous. Lots of people. You know, I was in San Diego County last year, you know, I was in a number of canyons. And if a fire started the base of that Canyon spread up, you're trapped, you have no escape route. So yes, fires typically spread up hill, and you think about the flames are bent over closer to the ground, depending on the slow so that it gets more radiation. It's more efficient, spreading up hill as opposed to downhill.
Nick VinZant 15:43 Are we developing new firefighting techniques? Or is it just more people, bigger trucks, bigger planes? Like Are there new ways of doing it? Are we just improving upon the old ones
Dr. Mike Flannigan 15:55 Going back in time there was programs Smokey Bear program, and not Smokey the Bear but Smokey Bear. And you know Smokey Bear has a couple of messages on is that fire, only you can prevent forest fires. And that's a great message. So that's talking about human caused ignitions. The other part is that it's inferred that fires bad fires are enemy we have to put out. And that's not the case at all. Okay? fires natural in many of our forests in Canada. And that's just Mother Nature work. Anything is beneficial, it kills disease, and insects. And it's the cycle of life that just resets the clock, lots of trees and other species are adapted to fire. And we've been okay, we don't want more fires, we put them all out. And that's creating a real problem. Because these systems are used to fire you've now removed it. But with climate change, fire is coming back, and we can't stop it. So principle behind fire management is to determine if it's a wanted fire or unwanted fire death, I actually said wanted fire. And then places in Canada and national parks and in the States and Canada, and some of our jurisdictions say, make a determination would that fire be beneficial, then we'll monitor now a fire starts two kilometers or two miles from Redding, California takes half a second to state that unwanted fire and UI hit hard, you want to hit fast, you want to report it right away. So that if you get to the fire when it's small, you know the size of an office or a typical yard. It's easy for for fire match. But once the fire gets the size of a football field as hot, dry and windy, the fuels are flammable, like conifer trees, we now have a serious problem. Okay, so there's a window, sometimes that window is as small as 15 minutes, you got a 15 minute window, think about structural firefighters, they get a call and your house is on fire. If they get there within 15 minutes, they can put that fire out. If you get there after 15 minutes, your house may be lost. The same thing about a wildland fire if you get there quickly you can put up to get there layer the horses out of the bar. And that fire is now running. And you know, you got to start planning accordingly. But you your opportunity to put out greatly decrease that your you'll be able to pull it out anytime soon.
Nick VinZant 18:39 We have some listener submitted questions. Are you ready for some listener submitted questions?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 18:45 Sure.
Nick VinZant 18:45 What is the worst place for fires? Currently,
Dr. Mike Flannigan 18:48 this is kind of a value judgment here. The worst place in terms of how frequent they are or how much impact in terms of impact, I would have to say. Currently California and Australia not too far behind on Arctic for different reasons. And Amazon, okay. You know, if we think we continue to burn the Amazon, and the land clearing tool for agriculture and grazing for cattle, this forest with all its biodiversity may flip to cereda, which is like a Savanna. And this is hard to imagine but that's where we're heading now in the Arctic. Because there's a lot of peat fires going on. And Pete is organic material is 40 centimeters or more in depth. And if you've done any landscaping, sometimes you've got bags with peat, peat moss. Well, these are carbon that has been building up over thousands of years now they're burning and releases significant amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. So the argument here is you know, the warmer we get more fire with the more fire we see the more greenhouse gases As we get which feeds the warming? So that's why I said that in Australia. While there's lots of people, number of people die, the smoke impacts that call from smoke was actually higher than the direct fire death toll, which was in the 30s.
Nick VinZant 20:17 How is the Arctic burning?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 20:19 So these are mostly lightning fires. And they, I'm not sure if you're aware, but there was a record breaking heat wave in Siberia. And once again, that relationship between temperature and fire, and there was a lot of lightning fires. They detected lightning near the North Pole now, because there's lightning detection since global systems. So if this virus Dart, and this peat, the fire can smolder and actually burn through winter, we call they've been coined zombie fires because they keep on going, even though they should, they shouldn't. And so they just continue to smolder, smolder. And when conditions right, it's flaming combustion, and it just burn and burn and burn. And in fact, in pea fires are common in Indonesia. And some of those peat fires have been burning for 30 years or more. And they just continue to smolder until the water table reaches to them, which maybe never, so I didn't see, it sounds pretty bad. And, you know, I do want you to be aware and your listeners, that the amount of area burned globally, it's about 400 million Hector's that's the size of modern day India. Okay. It's a huge area. And much of this is done in Africa, Australia. And, unfortunately, the Amazon. I love its cultural and some of its clearing fields. And the actual Larry Bird numbers, different estimate from remote sensing, you know, have been trending down globally, because it changes primarily in Africa, converting wild lands, to egg culture or urban areas, and some new policies to restrict burning of fields. So the numbers gone down, but we're seeing increases in places like western United States, Australia, Canada, Siberia. So even though the actual area bermed has been decreasing, globally, the impacts are increasing significantly. And 2020, maybe turning the corner, because 2020 seems to be higher than previous years. But these are estimates from satellites, and you have to take them with a grain of salt.
Nick VinZant 22:41 So is it just are the trees and plants changing at all? Is that contributing anything?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 22:48 Yeah, it's situational. It depends where you are. I'll give you some examples, or at least one example, from Hawaii. Hawaii is a great place. And but they have fire. And when people say fire, and if you've been to the Big Island, dry sighs Yeah. Well, that makes sense. But no, almost every island in the chain has had fire. And in part, so it's natural, but some of its more recent due to human caused fires. And because invasive grasses, okay, they're competing with native grasses. But these grasses are very flammable. They live and then they get, they die. And then they burn, but their root system survives. And then they come back even stronger, and the native species aren't used to fire are competed. And the worst thing is a change from a species to these, you know, invasive, exotic species that's promoting fire that's happening in western United States that's happening around the world. And this is where we're moving. Because, you know, people say, hey, if we keep on getting more fire, the trees won't be able to handle it. They're absolutely right, the trees will disappear. But what will replace it? shops are grass. So in some respects, we're moving to a grass world as we see more and more fire grass is going to be the winner, and grass can burn every year. Many of our forest systems in North America are used to fire but fire is too frequent. They cannot regenerate. So we may lose some of our forests in the process here if we continue to see more and more fire and arguably it's already happening in places
Nick VinZant 24:29 is there have been any place where you thought like oh, there's no way that place is gonna burn. And then it it has recently like it's changed so much that places you didn't think could burn are burning.
Dr. Mike Flannigan 24:41 So some of the dip into Australia a number of times some other rain forest. Yeah, this is never gonna burn. But you know, I guess the same could be said we're close to where you live. There's some temperate rainforest. You know, this will never burn the dripping wet as hell So green, but severe drought actually can burn and Wilburn. And we're starting to see that on Vancouver Island. You know, on the, on the west side is, you know, like the Olympic Peninsula, it's very wet, typically, but in the summer, you get these bunkers, of dry weather, you get some lightning strikes, which seemed to be more common now than they used to be. We do get fires in these areas where, hey, you know, it's too wet.
Nick VinZant 25:30 Or at least I thought it was. Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you weren't gonna get out of it? No. And this is interesting. Firefighters in Canada do not carry emergency shelters. Okay. Our Americans, cousins usually do. And the reason is, we believe we should never be a position you have to deploy, you should always have your safety routes. You should never be a dangerous spot that you have to do emergency shelters. So it's a little different philosophy. I've never felt unsafe. I think I've seen extreme fire behavior. Pyro cumulonimbus just incredible. But I was on this, I was upwind downwind from the from the system. So I was, you know, like watching a tornado. From a distance you find it and you know, it's moving away from you. But if you're on the other side and so No, I've never felt threatened. what's what's Pyro?
Dr. Mike Flannigan 26:44 Pyro CB for short. It's a fire generated thunderstorm. And you may have seen pictures of it from some of the recent California fires. In fact, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning a fire generated tornado warning this summer in California for the first time and on record. So the pictures you would see would be kind of smoky, you know, close to the earth. And then you kind of see that white below we call a flower look of a cloud sometimes with an animal sometimes not. That's a fire generate thunderstorm. Pyro cumulonimbus, Pyro being fire cumulonimbus being the term for thunderstorm. So fire generate thunderstorm, these are erratic, high intensity, very dangerous and difficult to well, essentially impossible to extinguish through direct attack.
Nick VinZant 27:42 What do you what are you working on? Not right now research wise, what are you looking at?
Dr. Mike Flannigan
So I do a lot of climate change work and I'm still working on climate change. I'm also looking at using machine learning artificial intelligence if you have a smartphone if you use any of the software, if using artificial intelligence to have a way of doing an early warning system, to identify when we're going to go through those periods of severe extreme fire weather, and where we can expect new fires to occur. So we can put resources on whether it's planes, helicopters crews, in the appropriate spot. So we're ready for it. And let's get the resources there. So we can deal with these fires quickly. So we don't have homemade escape buyers, threatening communities.