The Washington Post reports:

When the sky over New York City turned a thick, silty orange on Wednesday, 8 million residents woke up in a new era. Until this week, the East Coast had remained cocooned, thousands of miles away from the walls of choking smoke that have become commonplace in Washington state, California, Oregon and British Columbia. Not anymore.

The East Coast, along with the rest of the planet, has entered a new fire era, or — as Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University, calls it — the “Pyrocene.”

Fires have burned on Earth throughout its history, reshaping its landscape. But rising temperatures from fossil fuel burning and other human activities have tilted the balance, making wildfires more frequent and intense.

As a result, humans are feeling the impact of wildfires far from where they ignite. The blazes are also moving into areas that are normally waterlogged or frozen, pushing species closer to extinction and erasing some of the gains people have made in curbing pollution.

“We are creating the fire equivalent of an ice age,” Pyne said.

For the past few years, it has felt like fire is everywhere. In 2020, a wave of smoke and fire washed over the West Coast, burning over 10.2 million acres, and creating the second- and third-worst smoke days in U.S. history. (New York City’s orange Wednesday claimed the top spot this week.) Just six months earlier, Australia suffered through what is now known as the Black Summer, a months-long series of bush fires that sent native wildlife fleeing and swallowed lush coastal cities with wildfire smoke. Last year, the worst wildfires in two decades torched large swaths of Spain, Portugal and Romania; in northwest Spain, fires destroyed ecosystems and devastated local communities. [Continue reading…]