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Alaska on fire: Thousands of lightning strikes and a warming climate put Alaska on pace for another historic fire season

A large tundra fire burned near St. Mary’s, Alaska, on June 13, 2022.
BLM Alaska Fire Service/Incident Management Team/John Kern

Rick Thoman, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Alaska is on pace for another historic wildfire year, with its fastest start to the fire season on record. By mid-June 2022, over 1 million acres had burned. By early July, that number was well over 2 million acres, more than twice the size of a typical Alaska fire season.

We asked Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, why Alaska is seeing so many large, intense fires this year and how the region’s fire season is changing. Continue reading

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