It's getting hard to breathe

With fire season starting to ramp up, smoky skies are filling the Columbia Basin and creating unhealthy air. While fire season isn’t new to those in the Pacific Northwest, it has become more noticeable over the last few years.

“I think a lot of folks have been impressed by just in the last 10 years, just how much smokier our summers have been,” said Nick Bond, Washington State Climatologist at the University of Washington-based Office of the Washington State Climatologist, and a UW affiliate associate professor of atmospheric sciences.

There are several fires, mainly to the northwest of Grant County, contributing to the smoky air this week. According to InciWeb some of the closest burning fires are:

• Mohr fire - 86% contained, 6,944 acres

• White River fire - 5% contained, 6,912 acres

• Bolt Creek fire - 5% contained, 9,440 acres

• Cow Canyon fire - 90% contained, 5,832 acres

An Air Quality Alert was issued by the Washington Department of Ecology in Yakima on Wednesday for cities in Grant County’s neighbor, Chelan county. The alert is in effect until 8 a.m. Friday.

Bond said that while summers in Washington have appeared to be smokier, it isn’t due to more fires.

“What I've seen for Washington state as a whole is that the number of fires hasn't really changed over the last 20 years,” said Bond. “But the acreage has gone up and so I would say that the climate has played a role in terms of our summers definitely being warmer and tending to be drier.”

He explained that with summers becoming hotter and drier than they have been in the past, fires burn more acreage than they would have because more fuel is available to burn.

Bond noted that while this year’s fire season got off to a really slow start due to the abnormally wet spring, Washington summers could continue to get warmer and drier and that it is hard to tell if the rain is an early sign of climate change or due to natural changes in weather.

“What's kind of tricky there is that our summers being drier is something that our climate models are suggesting is going to be the case definitely by the middle of the century or so,” said Bond. “But what's uncertain is whether the relatively dry summers we've had, with some exceptions over the last 20 or 30 years, has that been a fluke or is that an early sign of climate change?”

While Bond said they are definitely seeing signs of climate change through the warming temperatures, the rain is the variable that seems to be more questionable.

“In general, we're much more sure about how the enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations have impacted temperatures, especially at night. Summer nights in the Pacific Northwest are warmer than they used to be,” said Bond. “The trends, they're unmistakable and entirely consistent with the physics of the situation and all that, but precipitation is a much kind of noisier natural fluctuation there. I think, personally, we're probably seeing the early manifestation of climate change. But it wouldn't surprise me if we have a run of coming up, who knows when it's going to start, of five or 10 years, where it's kind of more rain. And, you know, that wouldn't mean that climate change isn’t happening, that natural variability (could) kind of overwhelm the climate change signal.”

Rebecca Pettingill may be reached at rpettingill@columbiabasinherald.com.