The kind of disruption Revelle alluded to in the context of drought and rainfall is now referred to as a “phase shift”: a dramatic, effectively irreversible change in a region’s climate regime. There is abundant evidence that phase shifts are now under way across much of the planet. Fire behavior is just one indicator, but it is a graphic one, and Revelle’s home state of California offers a good example: in the 1950s, the state’s fire season lasted about four months; today, it is effectively year-round, and the acreage burned during the most severe seasons (1950 versus 2020) has increased
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