The pandemic slashed the West Coast’s emissions. Wildfires already reversed it.

Fires, droughts, insect infestations, and shifting climate conditions will convert major parts of California’s forests into shrublands, according to a modeling study published in AGU Advances last week. Tree losses could be particularly steep in the dense Douglas fir and coastal redwood forests along the Northern California coast and in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range. … Climate change is making wildfires worse in most forested areas of the globe, says James Randerson, a [chancellor’s] professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and a coauthor of the AGU paper.