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