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Horrifying news out of Chile as heatwave sparks extreme wildfires incinerating entire villages [1]

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Date: 2023-02-04  

Smoke billows over the Pacific as wildfires erupt across central Chile during an extraordinary summer heat wave.

A State of Catastrophe has been declared in Chile as wildfires have burned over 35,000 square acres and killed eighteen people at the time of posting.

Eleven of the thirteen died when a fire burned the village of Santa Juana in Biobio. Temperatures above 109 F were reported, desiccating local foliage and turning the farming and forest areas of Biobio and neighboring Maule, Ñuble, and Araucania into a tinder box.

Temperatures are expected to remain hot, with winds capable of igniting more fires in the central part of the country. The regions are receiving additional deployed troops and other resources.

From Yale Climate Connections:

Climate scientists have correlated the growing incidence and intensity of wildfires with rising global temperatures. Few places seem immune: Australia; Indonesia; Canada; Alaska; the American northwest, southwest and southeast; Chile; and Western Europe have all seen massive and destructive wildfires in recent years. In federally managed forests in the western U.S. today, wildfires larger than 1,000 acres have become nearly five times more frequent and burned areas 10 times as large as in the 1970s, according to research by LeRoy Westerling at the University of California at Merced. This time period corresponds to significant warming documented around the globe: Two-thirds of the 1.4-degree rise in average global temperatures since 1880 has occurred since 1975, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

x Images of an underground fire during forest fires currently in Chile. Secondary road between Quillon and Nueva Aldea. pic.twitter.com/wYcejKjFNf — Sophia Lambert 🇺🇸 (@DV16FDS5V) February 3, 2023

Over the next few decades, the wildfire forecast is grim. By mid-century, the annual area burned in the Western U.S., for example, could increase two to six times what it is today, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Uncertainties remain. Although the frequency of wildfires overall is very likely to increase as temperatures warm, where and when they’ll spark is difficult to impossible to predict. Furthermore, while scientists have studied the impact on climate warming on bark beetles, little is known about the impact on other insects or on forest pathogens. How warming affects the growth of trees is also uncertain, as are warming effects on the distribution and abundance of various species.

Climate change is global terrorism.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/4/2151032/-Horrifying-news-out-of-Chili-as-heatwave-sparks-extreme-wildfires-incinerating-entire-villages

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