Climate change: Wildfires in the Western U.S. are burning higher up the mountains

Jun 1, 2021

Fire trucks are shown lined up as a hillside burns during a brush fire in the Sepulveda Pass on the western edge of Los Angeles

Wildfires are moving further up the hillside. Image: REUTERS/Gene Blevins

Mojtaba Sadegh

Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, Boise State University

John Abatzoglou

Associate Professor of Engineering, University of California, Merced

Mohammad Reza Alizadeh

Ph.D. Student in Engineering, McGill University

Our Impact

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how United States is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

United States

Have you read?

Forest fires advanced to higher elevations as the climate dried from 1984 to 2017. Every 200 meters equals 656 feet. Image: Mojtaba Sadegh, CC BY-ND

One of Colorado’s largest wildfires, 2020’s East Troublesome Fire, crossed the Continental Divide and was burning at elevations around 9,000 feet in October, when snow normally would have been falling. Image: AP Photo/David Zalubowski

Discover

What’s the World Economic Forum doing about climate change?

a chart showing how mcuh wildfires burn each year

Prior to 1983, federal wildland fire agencies did not track official wildfire data using current reporting processes. Image: The Conversation/CC-BY-ND and National Interagency Coordination Center

a graph showing the upsoping of iwldfires in the us

On average, fires have spread 826 feet (252 meters) higher into the mountains in recent decades, exposing an additional 31,400 square miles (81,500 square kilometers) of forests to fire. Image: Mojtaba Sadegh, CC BY-ND

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.