Great Plains Wildfires March 2017
The record-breaking wildfires that erupted in early March in the Great Plains are consistent with the long-term increasing wildfire activity observed in the western US grasslands, activity driven by climate change trends in the Great Plains region.[1] Since the 1970s, large grass and shrubland fires have increased by more than 100,000 acres per decade. The frequency and intensity of wildfires in the Great Plains are increasing as the combination of higher temperatures, untamed underbrush and more extreme drought elevate wildfire risk.
Formal attribution work has identified the fingerprint of global warming in the record hot temperatures that swept across the US east of the Rockies in February 2017, as climate change increased the likelihood of such heat by threefold. The heat fueled worsening drought conditions in the Great Plains region, contributing to the extreme fire conditions in early March that precipitated major blazes in Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Texas.
One blaze, encompassing Clark and Comanche counties along Kansas' southern border with Oklahoma, is the largest wildfire on record in the state. The previous record was set just one year prior.[2] Record-breaking events are a classic signal of climate change, as records tend to break when natural variation runs in the same direction as climate change, in this instance towards larger wildfires.