The 2019 Wildfire Season: 420,002,019th Year of Biomass Burning on Earth (Invited Presentation)

This year CONUS US overall was below normal for wildfire activity, though as of this writing California is entering its primary east wind event season, which brings increased fire potential when these events occur. The lack of significant warm and dry periods was major contributing factor in the reduced activity. However, anomalous warm and dry did occur in Alaska, allowing for extensive fire activity and approximately 2.5 million acres burned. In fact, high latitude fires elsewhere in the boreal region occurred extensively in Alberta, Canada and Siberia, Russia due to dominating warm and dry conditions, and even Greenland had a notable fire in August. England had a record number of fires for the second year in a row due to early season warm and dry conditions. Extensive Amazon region fires in Brazil were frequently in the news, and as well as Indonesia where widespread smoke impacted human health. Queensland and New South Wales, Australia has already had significant fires given an unusually early start of the fire season. This presentation highlights the 2019 wildfire season, emphasizing the role of weather and climate, and key events and impacts through pictures and narrative.