Anthony Westerling's groundbreaking 2006 study was one of the first to show a link between climate change and the increase in wildfires in the western United States.

"In the last several decades there has been a tremendous increase of fires in the western United States, and it's directly related to climate changes," he says. "Warmer spring and summer and earlier snowmelt."

Westerling and researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other institutions constructed a database of large wildfires, more than 1,000 acres, between 1970 and 2003 and compared it with climate data. They found a sudden and dramatic increase in fires in the mid-'80s that they link to climate warming.

A temperature increase of less than 1 degree Celsius, Westerling says, resulted in a 300 percent increase in the number of fires and a 600 percent increase in the areas burned. The temperature increase also lengthened the fire season by 78 days. The average large fire in the '70s typically burned for a week. In the 2000s, he says, big fires go for an average of five weeks.

Some climate change scientists have predicted that average temperatures will increase by 1.5 degrees C to 5.8 degrees C by the end of the 21st century. If that scenario materializes, more wildfires are in the future, and the impact on the state will be devastating.

"Suppose you had a location that burned every 100 years and now because of climate change it wants to burn every 20 years?" Westerling asks. "What would that do to the ecosystem? You might get a shift in species and carbon storage."

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