Cli­mate change hit home in Col­orado this week, exac­er­bat­ing mul­ti­ple envi­ron­men­tal calami­ties: wild­fires burn­ing across 135,423 acres, stream flows shrink­ing to where state offi­cials urged lim­its on fish­ing, drought wilt­ing crops, and record tem­per­a­tures bak­ing heat-absorb­ing cities.

This is what sci­en­tists, for decades, have been warn­ing would happen.

Gov. Jared Polis on Tues­day lament­ed “the hot and dry con­di­tions” and called smoke impacts from the state’s four major wild­fires “pro­found,” not­ing “poor air qual­i­ty often can cause COVID-type symp­toms.” He banned camp­fires and fire­works statewide for a month.

“The hot, dry weath­er is mak­ing fire behav­ior extreme, and the rapid spread is already tax­ing our resources to fight fires,” the gov­er­nor said at an after­noon news con­fer­ence. “We need to do every­thing we can to stop fires from start­ing in the first place.”

Mean­while, envi­ron­men­tal groups have filed law­suits against Col­orado press­ing for cli­mate action. State law­mak­ers last year ordered state offi­cials to cre­ate a plan by July 1 for reduc­ing heat-trap­ping green­house gas air pol­lu­tion by 90% before 2050 in an effort to save future gen­er­a­tions — some­thing that hasn’t been done.

Polis “knows we must act to shift to renew­able ener­gy by 2040 and do our part on cli­mate,” his deputy press sec­re­tary Shel­by Wie­man said.

A let­ter sent to Polis this week from 100 cli­mate activists urged greater inclu­sion of low-income res­i­dents in cre­at­ing a plan to cut green­house gas pollution.

But that polit­i­cal flare-up was about the future.

“This is a now prob­lem, not a future prob­lem. We’re see­ing sys­temic change of the cli­mate that man­i­fests itself not just in heat but in fire, in water, in agri­cul­ture, and in eco­nom­ics,” said Aspen Ski Com­pa­ny vice pres­i­dent Auden Schendler, a for­mer Basalt town coun­cil­man who served until last month — when Polis declined to re-appoint him — on Colorado’s Air Qual­i­ty Con­trol Commission.

“How many times are you not going to be able to dri­ve through Glen­wood Canyon?” Schendler asked, refer­ring to the Griz­zly Creek fire, which has closed Inter­state 70 for more than a week. “And, by the way, after these fires, we are going to have land­slide. This is such an obvi­ous clear and present dan­ger. Now is the time to deploy real­ly aggres­sive cli­mate policy.”

Build­ing resilience has emerged as the challenge.

“We’re going to have to become more resilient to some of these changes — and be pre­pared for them,” state cli­ma­tol­o­gist Russ Schu­mach­er said.

Heat and drought

Cli­mate sci­en­tists empha­sized that aver­age tem­per­a­tures will con­tin­ue to increase for decades due to humans burn­ing so many fos­sil fuels — coal, gas and oil — in the past. That means impacts includ­ing wild­fires, arid­i­ty, deplet­ed streams and rivers — with some vari­abil­i­ty — like­ly will intensify.

This week, the tem­per­a­ture in Death Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, hit 130 degrees — among the high­est tem­per­a­tures ever record­ed worldwide.

Denver’s tem­per­a­ture hit a record 100 degrees Tues­day, and the Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice saw lit­tle sign of cool­ing here and around the West. August was on pace to be the hottest on record in Den­ver, where tem­per­a­tures have topped 90 degrees on 58 days this year, approach­ing the 2012 record of 73. Mete­o­rol­o­gists fore­cast­ed highs above 94 degrees at least through next Tuesday.

This sum­mer is now 1 day off of the pace set in 2012. It looks like we will be mov­ing ahead of the 2012 pace over the next cou­ple days. #COwx pic.twitter.com/UU1wBEnrbK

— NWS Boul­der (@NWSBoulder) August 17, 2020

Ear­li­er this month, fed­er­al offi­cials des­ig­nat­ed 100% of Col­orado abnor­mal­ly dry or in drought for the first time in eight years, and the fourth time dur­ing the state’s 20-year shift toward greater aridity.

This reflects a cli­mate-dri­ven com­bi­na­tion in Col­orado of heat and lack of pre­cip­i­ta­tion that is unleash­ing myr­i­ad new strains on ecosys­tems, Shu­mach­er said from his base at  Col­orado State University’s Col­orado Cli­mate Cen­ter. “Our big pic­ture is changes to the water cycle, and when things start to change in those sys­tems is puts stress on every­thing. And wild­fires are an out­come,” he said.

“Car­bon diox­ide stays in the atmos­phere for a long time,” Shu­mach­er said. “Even if we com­plete­ly stopped emit­ting green­house gas­es tomor­row, the effects of what hap­pened over the past decades will still be up there. …  It’s going to con­tin­ue to get warmer. And how that plays out in spe­cif­ic impacts is tough to pin down. Whether it is farm­ers, ranch­ers or water man­agers, long-term plan­ning for change is cer­tain­ly necessary.”

“So dang hot”

In west­ern Col­orado, fed­er­al fire­fight­ing man­agers list­ed high tem­per­a­tures as a main cause of the four largest wild­fires. The “extreme fire behav­ior” they observed includ­ed flames leap­ing from tree-tops to burn up more trees and embers fly­ing beyond front edges of fire walls as far as 2,500 feet to spark new fires.

Hot­ter tem­per­a­tures linked to cli­mate warm­ing have led to big­ger and more fre­quent west­ern wild­fires, which burned twice as many acres a year over the past two decades com­pared with the pre­vi­ous 15 years, accord­ing to fed­er­al fire data. Cli­mate warm­ing also is lead­ing to ear­li­er melt­ing of moun­tain win­ter snow­pack and faster dry­ing out of soils.

“In wild­fires, a lit­tle bit of warm­ing is lead­ing to a lot more burn­ing. I expect us to see much more burn­ing in response to con­tin­ued increas­ing tem­per­a­tures,” Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado fire sci­en­tist Jen­nifer Balch said, rec­om­mend­ing bet­ter pro­tec­tion for people.

“It boils down to two things. Build­ing bet­ter. And burn­ing bet­ter. We need to rethink how we put more homes in harm’s way. And we need to let fires burn and use pre­scribed fires to fight fire.”

At front edges of the light­ning-sparked, 87,778-acre Pine Gulch fire on fed­er­al land about 10 miles from Frui­ta, hun­dreds of fire­fight­ers risked heat exhaus­tion as they strug­gled for control.

“The heat mat­ters. What it means is the rel­a­tive humid­i­ty stays in the sin­gle dig­its and we’re not get­ting recov­er­ies overnight. It is just so dang hot,” said Tra­cy LeClair, spokes­woman for the mul­ti­a­gency team tasked with sup­press­ing that fire, one of the largest in Col­orado history.

“When the winds blow, we’re see­ing  flames spot­ting 1,500 to 2,500 feet ahead of the fire front. We’ve def­i­nite­ly had extreme fire behav­iors: fire mov­ing quick­ly, espe­cial­ly in some of the lighter, flashier fuels like grass­es and sage brush. Then, when the wind and ter­rain align, it real­ly push­es the fire and can cre­ate almost like a wind tun­nel in nar­row canyons.”

Risk to fish

Water lev­els in stream and rivers across the Col­orado Riv­er Basin decreased rapid­ly with most snow melt­ed. Fed­er­al offi­cials warned that water in the largest reser­voirs along the Col­orado Riv­er — Lake Mead and Lake Pow­ell — will remain bare­ly above trig­ger-points for addi­tion­al cuts in Cal­i­for­nia, Neva­da and Arizona.

Heat in Col­orado hit streams so hard that fish may die. Col­orado Parks and Wildlife man­agers on Mon­day issued a notice ask­ing anglers in south­west­ern Col­orado to stop fish­ing before noon “because of the low flows and warm water tem­per­a­tures” that hurt fish.

Heav­i­ly-fished rivers “have dete­ri­o­rat­ed to crit­i­cal lev­els for trout sur­vival,” the notice said, and more fish­ing in low water where tem­per­a­tures exceed 71 degrees could wors­en the harm. Wildlife offi­cials also sug­gest­ed that anglers car­ry ther­mome­ters to check riv­er tem­per­a­tures and not fish in water warmer than 70 degrees.

State offi­cials also closed the Ridg­way State Park swim­ming beach for the sum­mer. A large draw-down of water in the reser­voir was nec­es­sary to help farm­ers, ranch­ers and towns. “Due to the dry con­di­tions,” a notice said, “water must be shipped down­stream for agri­cul­tur­al and munic­i­pal use.”

In Den­ver and oth­er Front Range cities, low­er-income res­i­dents, includ­ing hun­dreds with­out homes camp­ing along streets, bore the brunt of the heat and haze from waft­ing wild­fire smoke. At a Home Depot store along Col­orado Boule­vard, portable air-con­di­tion­ing cool­ers arrived after sell­ing out in July. Clerk Mason But­ler said “there’s def­i­nite­ly a cor­re­la­tion between the cli­mate and peo­ple pur­chas­ing AC at Home Depot.”

Den­ver para­medics report­ed receiv­ing 22 calls since July 1 for res­i­dents seek­ing help for heat exhaus­tion or heat stokes.

Health impacts of extreme heat range from wors­en­ing of dia­betes and res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments to vital organ fail­ure, heat stroke and some­times death. These hit the elder­ly, chil­dren and peo­ple with chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions the hard­est. Statewide, Col­orado Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health and Envi­ron­ment records show that, since 2011, extreme heat sent an aver­age of 451 peo­ple a year to doc­tors seek­ing med­ical help.