The extraordinary year of California’s unprecedented year has created another new milestone – the modern “Gigafire”, a shining one-meter-wide expanse in modern history.

On Monday, the August complex fire in Northern California spread to more than 1 million acres, simply upgrading it from “Megfire” to a new classification, “Gigfire”, which has never been used before in the state’s contemporary environment.

The 1.03-meter-acre fire is larger than the state of Rhode Island and has spread across seven counties, the fire agency Cal Fire said. A combination of several fires during a thunderstorm in a dry forest in August, the massive eruption has been burning for 50 days and is only half-contained.

The August Complex fire has listed more than 40 million acres of California this year, with an image of the Cal Fire called “mind-boggling” and doubling the previous annual record. Five of the six largest fires recorded in the state occurred in 2020, killing dozens and destroying thousands of buildings.

California’s biggest fire season is showing no signs of abating. The state has endured a heatwave this summer, aided by plenty of wildfires in addition to the seasonal winds that usually usually historically fan the dotted blazes along the west coast.

A number of uncontrolled fires in the western United States are on the rise due to the climate crisis, scientists say, and rising temperatures and prolonged droughts could cause plants and soil to lose moisture.

This perched landscape makes the larger fire much more likely. According to an analysis by the Climate Center, large wildfires are seen across the west three times more often than in the 1970s, and the wildfire season lasts more than three months.

“We predicted last year that we were living in our current climate with the opportunity for such an extreme event.” Dr. Jennifer Balch, Fire Ecologist at Boulder University, Colorado. “No need for crystal balls.”

The 2020 fire season caused haze to form blankets on the west coast and occasionally damaged the sun. But experts warn that this year may soon seem relatively light as global warming continues due to the release of greenhouse gases from human activity.

Andrew Desler, a climate scientist at A&M University in Texas, said, “If you don’t like all of the climate disasters that occurred in 2020, I have some bad news about your whole life.

Parts of California are expected to get some relief this week, with temperatures dropping to 15 degrees in Northern California by Friday. National Weather Service. Meteorologists are forecasting some mild to moderate showers that could help fire efforts in the north, but climate scientists warn that this is probably not a seasonal storm.

“Temperatures will begin to come closer to normal for the season, relative humidity will slowly begin to rise and we will begin to see lighter winds,” said Tom Bird, a meteorologist at the Glass Fire incident, which devastated various parts of the wine country and continues. To burn.

Burke predicted this weekend there would be a “temporary immersion” in the weather of the fire but will come next week, “we’ll get hot, we’ll dry again”, Bird said. “Somehow we don’t want to end the fire season with this event.”

Much of the central valley is still on air quality alert because of wildfire smoke from the creek fire, which burned more than 326,000 acres, and the SQF complex fire, which burned about 159,000 acres in the Sierra National Forest.

In northwestern California, where the August complex fire broke out, there was air quality “even in unhealthy locations in the locally dangerous section.” Meanwhile, coastal areas of the state woke up in dense fog on Tuesday, in a confusing contrast to this smoke-filled smoke that many had become accustomed to when they saw the peaks of wildfires.