In 2020, setting records, the amount of land burned by wildfire in the western United States totaled the land mass greater than the state of Maryland.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers were able to link human-caused climate change to increase in frequency and severity of the wildfires in the western United States. Utilizing artificial intelligence to connect climate and fire data to an important wildfire risk, vapor pressure deficit (VPD), scientists were able to estimate the contribution of human activity to recent wildfires.

The higher the vapor pressure deficits, in the warmer and dryer the air, and the higher the risks of wildfires.

The study found that 68% of the increase in VPD over the past 41 years was linked directly to human-induced climate change and global warming. Whereas the remaining 32% was likely by natural means by they way of weather patterns.

Furthermore, the large VPD in August of 2020, 50% was caused by humans.

“Our results suggest that the western United States appears to have passed a critical threshold—that human-induced warming is now more responsible for the increase of vapor pressure deficit than natural variations in atmospheric circulation,” stated author, Rong Fu. “Our analysis shows this change has occurred since the beginning of the 21st century, much earlier than we anticipated.”

Real men. Real, honorable men would take responsibility for their actions and reflect on these scientific studies on how they can change their way to not being a cause of this tremendous damage done on their the planet and to their fellow beings.

Y Zhuang et al. Quantifying contributions of natural variability and anthropogenic forcing of increased fire weather risk over the western United States. PNAS 2021. 118(45); e2111875118