Ancient tree-ring records from Southwest US suggest today's megafires are truly unusual

Today's mega forest fires of the southwestern US are truly unusual and exceptional in the long-term record, suggests an unprecedented study that examined 1,500 years of ancient tree ring and fire data from two distinct climate periods. Researchers constructed and analyzed a statistical model and found that today's dry, hot climate combined with the past century of human fire suppression is causing megafires, said study co-author and fire anthropologist Christopher Roos, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Read more