We will remember the summer of 2020 as the time when the US couldn’t catch a break. The summer experienced record-breaking temperatures along with a record number of wildfires and surging COVID-19 cases. Is there a connection between high temperatures, wildfires and COVID-19? Could climate change be playing a role in all of these things?
Let’s discuss each case and their connection to climate change.
Hottest Summer Ever Recorded
The world is getting hotter. According to the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, July 2020 tied for second-hottest July on record for the entire globe. From melting permafrost in Siberia to an unprecedented number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, the Northern Hemisphere saw its hottest July ever, even surpassing the previous record set in 2019.
On the west coast, Los Angeles county experienced its hottest temperature ever with a high of 121F. This followed months of drought conditions setting the stage for the largest number of devastating wildfires in modern history.
Wildfires Ignite
Five of California's 10 largest fires in modern history are all burning at once. The destruction from this year’s wildfires include 3.2 million acres burned and 4,200 buildings destroyed which forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. In addition to the burned acres in California, 954,000 acres have been lost in Oregon and 500,000 in Washington state.
A study published in August shows climate change is increasing the risk of extreme wildfire conditions during the fall season in California. The state’s frequency of fall days with extreme fire-weather conditions has more than doubled since the 1980s, the study found.
Man-made Disaster?
Like the levees breaking during Hurricane Katrina, humans have contributed to this disaster. The policy of suppressing fires rather than relying on deliberate, prescribed burns to clear away dead trees and underbrush is making wildfires burn hotter for longer, which in turn makes them more deadly.
Just like hurricanes, wildfires are natural disasters. But how forests are managed at the federal and state level can turn a naturally occurring phenomenon into a man-made disaster.
According to Crystal Kolden, an assistant professor at the University of California, Merced, says with prescribed burns, “it breaks up the landscape, so that when wildfires do occur, they're much less severe, they're much smaller, and when they occur around communities, they're much easier to control.”
“Decades of rushing to stamp out flames that naturally clear out small trees and undergrowth have had disastrous unintended consequences. This approach means that when fires do occur, there’s often far more fuel to burn, and it acts as a ladder, allowing the flames to climb into the crowns and take down otherwise resistant mature trees.”
Climate change, which exacerbates these risks, seems to have finally tipped the balance of what was an increasingly untenable situation, says Anthony LeRoy Westerling, who is also at UC Merced. In California, it almost certainly intensified the prolonged drought earlier this decade, which killed some 150 million trees in the Sierra Nevada range.
Lockdown Reduces Air Pollution
Up until the wildfires, there had been a welcome reduction in air pollution due to the COVID-19 lockdown. With more people staying home from school and work, pollution from cars and trucks was reduced, improving air quality for millions of people.
According to a global study published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States, lower concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter have been found at ground-level in 34 countries during the lockdown up until May 15. The researchers also examined Google and Apple mobility data finding a link between global vehicle transportation declines and the reduction of nitrogen dioxide exposure.
Hazardous Air
Unfortunately, residents of the US west coast did not enjoy clean air for long. When wildfires started in August, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index found several cities and towns experiencing air quality levels at the “hazardous level”. A month later, the Purple Air map which measures air quality with indoor and outdoor sensors still finds “hazardous levels” of air quality dotted along the path of the fires from California to Washington state.
What does this mean for residents’ health? Air pollution is the fifth-leading risk factor for deaths worldwide (11th in America), resulting in an estimated 4.6 million fatalities, per year. An estimated 15,000 American deaths annually are linked to wildfire smoke exposure alone, a number expected to more than double by the end of the century.
Studies have documented the clear association between wildfire smoke exposure and lung function decline in children. Adverse birth outcomes, including lower birth weights, have been observed among babies that were in utero during the 2003 southern California wildfires. Similar global studies suggest a link between wildfire exposure and poor health outcomes among newborns in Southeast Asia.
COVID-19 Risks and Air Pollution
Not only are people living in pollution hot spots more likely to get COVID-19, those exposed to air pollution, be it from wildfires, coal plants or combustion fueled cars, they suffer worse outcomes during a novel coronavirus infection.
A new nationwide study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that people with COVID-19 who live in U.S. regions with high levels of air pollution are more likely to die from the disease than people who live in less polluted areas.
The study looked at more than 3,000 counties across the country, comparing levels of fine particulate air pollution with coronavirus death counts for each area. The researchers found that a small increase in long-term exposure to small particulate matter leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate.
The study found, for example, that someone who lives for decades in a county with high levels of fine particulate pollution is 8% more likely to die from COVID-19 than someone who lives in a region that has just one unit (one microgram per cubic meter) less of such pollution.
Other studies have found similar outcomes. An analysis from Italy observed that higher concentrations of fine particulate matter corresponded with higher COVID-19 incidence and mortality across 110 geographic areas in the region. The infection rate tripled when particulate matter increased 250 percent, and mortality rates doubled when particulate matter increased 220 percent.
Connecting the Dots
It seems clear that there are connections between climate change, deadly wildfires, air pollution, and risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19. Are we trapped in a vicious cycle of global warming, dislocation and poor health outcomes?
We may be nearing the tipping point for climate change. There is no time to lose in reducing carbon emissions and air pollution, and implementing policies to better manage land and forest areas. We can’t control the weather, but we can all do our part to reduce our impact on the environment.
To help your company address its environmental impact, contact SSC for a free consultation.