Quote:
Originally Posted by WarrenC12
Big wind storms are part of the extreme weather that climate change is making much more common.
|
That's
literally what I said.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
So are windstorms. Wind storms can create lots of dead brush which catches fire more easily. Increased temperatures in winter could lead to more wind storms.
|
And yes, forest management is absolutely a factor. We'e pretty good at in Canada but strategies need to shift to adapt to the reality of climate change.
Dead brush is used by forestry companies to make low-cost products like particle board, OSB, and cardboard. Although this products are cheap they're made in huge quantities. There's limits on how much deadwood can be harvested as ecosystems need a certain amount of it for habitats (many bird species only nest in deadwood, for example, and many insect species feed on it), but these limits don't account for the increase in deadwood from climate change leading to more windstorms. That was a huge aggravating factor in the wildfires that happened in Eastern Ontario (a region that doesn't normally burn) this year - a big windstorm in 2022 left behind huge volumes (far beyond normal levels) of deadwood that forestry companies were restricted from removing.
If we had reacted to the windstorm by increasing allowances for deadwood harvesting, those wildfires would have been a lot easier to contain.