Climate change extends wildfire burning hours, disrupting natural nighttime dormancy patterns in North American ecosystems
Original framing: “Wildfires used to 'go to sleep' at night. Climate change is turning them into prime burning hours” — Phys.org
The shift from natural fire regimes to extended burning hours is rooted in 150 years of fire suppression policies, including the U.S. Forest Service's 1935 '10 AM policy' mandating immediate suppression of all fires. This policy, combined with industrial logging and urban sprawl, created dense, homogeneous forests prone to megafires. Historical parallels exist in Australia's 2009 Black Saturday fires, where decades of fire exclusion led to catastrophic outcomes. The current crisis is not just a climate issue but a legacy of maladaptive land management that prioritized short-term economic gains over ecological resilience.
The expansion of wildfire burning hours is not merely a climate change symptom but a convergence of historical fire suppression policies, industrial land mismanagement, and the erasure of Indigenous fire stewardship.
For over a century, colonial land management practices—from the U.S. Forest Service's 10 AM policy to industrial logging—created fire-prone landscapes, while Indigenous knowledge systems that maintained fire-resilient ecosystems were systematically suppressed. The current crisis disproportionately impacts marginalised communities, including Indigenous peoples, farmworkers, and low-income households, who face both the immediate health risks of wildfire smoke and the long-term displacement from post-fire gentrification. Cross-cultural fire management traditions, from Australian Aboriginal cool burning to California's cultural burning practices, offer proven solutions that have been sidelined in favor of industrial suppression tactics. Future resilience requires a paradigm shift: reviving Indigenous fire stewardship, redesigning urban-wildland interfaces, and redirecting suppression funding toward forest restoration and community-based smoke relief. This systemic approach must center marginalised voices and challenge the power structures that have prioritized short-term economic gains over ecological and social well-being.