Global Warming Sends Forest Ablaze

A study in the United States reveals that the dramatic rise in wildfire activity and intensity was due to the rising seasonal temperature.
The term wildfire denotes a nature-induced forest fire.  Foresters usually classify forest firs into ground fires, surface fires, and crown fires.  Ground fires burn the humus layer of the forest floor; surface fires burn underneath that includes shrubs and smaller plants while crown fires advance through the tops of trees and shrubs.  As they burn wildfires spew greater amounts of mercury.  Mercury is a highly toxic substance that can cause brain damage and lead to birth defects.  Wildfire is more induced due to global warming, forests and wetlands are becoming drier, which makes them susceptible to burning.  According to Anthony Westerling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at higher elevations, what really drives the fire season is the temperature.  When you have a warm spring and early summer, you get earlier snow melts.With the snow melt coming out a month earlier, areas then get drier earlier overall, and there is a longer season in which a fire can be started.
According to the director of Scripps the  increase in large wildfires appears to be another part of chain reactions to climate warming.  The study indicated that the average number of wildfires increased fourfold in the mid-1980s, as compared wit records for the 1970s  and early 1980s.  In terms of intensity, the wildfires that occurred in the mid-1980s conflagrated a total area that is six and half times greater than the total area recorded for the previous years.  That means more wildfires are to be expected for another two and half months every year.
Scientists believe that the increased frequency of forest fires will eventually reduce the density of trees and change entire forest landscapes.  With the occurrence of  more wildfires; forest are being transformed into potential sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide as they burn up. While a lot of people think that the full effects of global warming are fifty or one hundred years away, the fact is that it's happening now in forest ecosystems through fire.