Colorado wildfires are 'what global warming really looks like' (+video)

The wildfires ravaging Colorado are a preview of the kinds of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring about, say scientists.?

By Deborah Zabarenko and Laura Zuckerman,?Reuters / June 29, 2012

A firefighting helicopter makes a run over a plume of smoke rising from the Waldo Canyon wildfire west of Colorado Springs, Colo., Thursday.

Chris Carlson/AP

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Scorching heat, high winds and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic?wildfires?in the U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists said on Thursday.

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"What we're seeing is a window into what?global?warming?really looks like,"?Princeton University's?Michael Oppenheimer?said during a telephone press briefing. "It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster ... This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future."

In?Colorado,?wildfires?that have raged for weeks have killed four people, displaced thousands and destroyed hundreds of homes. Because winter snowpack was lighter than usual and melted sooner, fire season started earlier in the U.S. West, with?wildfires?out of control in?Colorado,?Montana?and?Utah.

The high temperatures that are helping drive these fires are consistent with projections by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said this kind of extreme heat, with little cooling overnight, is one kind of damaging impact of?global?warming.

Others include more severe storms, floods and droughts, Oppenheimer said.

The stage was set for these fires when winter snowpack was lighter than usual, said?Steven Running, a forest ecologist at the?University of Montana.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/b4zbOiGxwoU/Colorado-wildfires-are-what-global-warming-really-looks-like-video

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