Ask a Scientist- The wildfire season is longer, more severe and harder to control. Why

Climate change is making the wildfire season longer by increasing the amount of energy in the system, increasing the lengths of our summers and shortening the lengths of our winters which leads to drier conditions early in the season and a longer fire season at the end of the season and it also is causing increased winds that also makes fire harder to control and leads to more severe conditions. You have to remember that we've started with forests that have already experienced a century or more of the exclusion of fire and so we have fuels built up above the levels that would have existed if we had not fought fire historically and now those fuels are sitting out there in a condition that makes them more likely to burn when we get higher temperatures and more droughty conditions as a result of climate change. One of the ways in which that situation can be addressed is by restoring fire to those systems and we can do that by allowing wildfires to burn where it's safe to do so and we can also reintroduce fire through the process of prescribed fire. It's my hope that prescribed fire will be vindicated as a tool to reduce the fuel levels and continue its historic important role as a fire control mechanism.