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The number of California properties facing serious wildfire risk will increase sixfold in the next 30 years if considered alone the impact of climate change, according to projections released Monday by a nonprofit research group.
A a little more than 100,000 properties in the state currently have a 1% annual chance or more to be affected by forest fires .
“A broad swath of the country, not typically associated with #Wildfires, is already under threat Nearly 55 million properties in the US stand a significant chance of exposure to #Fire, according to a model built by the nonprofit First Street Foundation.”https://t.co/D55vyxKBEn— BreezoMeter (@BreezoMeter) May 12, 2022
It is expected that the number range around 800,000 to 2052, according to data from First Street Foundation.
The model, which marks the first effort To calculate the fire risk of each property in the United States, it assumes that development will remain constant and only takes into account climate data, according to the Los Angeles newspaper. Angeles Times, Jeremy Porter, Foundation Research Director.
The investigation is in the process of peer review.
“When in 30 years, you have a six-fold increase in the most severe category, with 800,000 households at that level, it’s amazing to think about that when you see how fast the impacts are changing from what they are relatively small changes in heat,” said Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of the First Street Foundation.
“And just the impact of heat on fuels and humidity and drought cause these big changes in the probability of these events happening.”
Overall, more than half of all properties in the 48 contiguous states (almost 80 millions) run to Some risk of being affected by wildfires, with about 1.9% of properties facing an annual risk of 1% or more, according to the First Street Foundation. That figure is also expected to increase.
“On average, the probability of forest fire risk will double in the next 30 years, and that’s across the country,” Porter said.
“So, on average, any property that is at risk is likely to see that risk double. And then that also takes into account a lot of places that are not at risk today and will see risk moving into the future.”
The flaming weather signal appears to be much stronger than what the researchers saw when they modeled the increasing risk of flooding several years ago, he added.
In California, more than 4.6 million properties (about 41%) have a probability of 0.03% or more of being involved in a wildfire this year.
This figure is expected to grow by 31 years by 7.6% to include more than 5.5 million properties, based on First Street Foundation projections.
It isexpected the California county with the highest growth in that risk level over the next 30 years is Sonoma, with an increase of 41.6%, followed by Napa, Marin, Yolo and Santa Bárbara, according to projections.
The fires of 2017 in wine country, which devastated parts of Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and Solano counties, were among the most destructive in the state, with about 8,400 Destroyed buildings. The analysis used the threshold of 0.03% as a reference for a significant risk because it translates into a 1% chance that a property will be affected by a fire during 17 years, the average life of a mortgage.
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