Colorado broke more than 350 daily maximum temperature records while Denver also witnessed accelerating heat records this year. Grand Junction recorded 107 degrees on July 17. Average temperatures in western Colorado are now at least four degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels. Colorado recorded around 1,400 storm reports in 2023, more than double the number of reports in 2022.

Was this wild weather an anomaly? Was it because of the El Niño pattern developing in the Pacific Ocean? No, not an anomaly. And not only because of El Niño, but primarily because of a long-term warming trend caused by climate change.

Several recent reports have indeed confirmed that this is affecting many weather and climate extremes such as heat waves, drought, wildfires, heavy precipitation, and powerful storms. These include reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2022, the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) annual Emissions Gap report released on November 20, and a stark new report from federal agencies — the Fifth National Climate Assessment issued on November 14 — which covers ten US regions and is of special importance to us as it fully examines the Southwest region.

The IPCC warns that “Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused wide-spread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people…The rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.” It issued a dire warning that “without timely action taken to effectively address the unprecedented changes in the climate system, these changes will have a catastrophic impact on the planet and all life on it.”

According to the UNEP report, “the world is witnessing a disturbing acceleration in the number, speed and scale of broken climate records.” It warned that even if countries complied with their existing carbon-cutting plans the planet will reach a disastrous heating between 2.5 degrees Celsius and 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the Century, and perhaps even could reach 3 degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned that if the earth warmed to these levels it would render parts of the planet essentially uninhabitable for humans and perhaps lead to irreversible tipping points. The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said that leaders “can’t kick the can any further,” that dramatic climate action is needed, and added the world “must reverse course,” as “the emissions gap is more like an emissions canyon.”

The National Climate Assessment brings climate change’s impacts down to national and local levels. It said that since 1970, the lower 48 states have warmed by 1.4 degrees Celsius and Alaska has heated up by 2.3 degrees Celsius compared to the global average of 0.9 degrees Celsius. The message is clear: climate change is “harming physical, mental, spiritual, and community health and well-being through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, increasing cases of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water quality and security.”

The report finds that climate change is already affecting people’s security, health, and livelihoods all over the country in different ways with Native American and minority communities suffering often disproportionately.

The report added that the Southwest is experiencing extreme heat and more drought reducing water supplies and increasing the risk of wildfires. It suffered 31 large climate-related disasters causing 700 deaths and over $67 Billion in damages. Colorado’s disasters include the 2021 Marshall fire in Boulder County, intense hailstorms, and severe drought.

If climate change continues at its current speed, Colorado will suffer from increasing wildfires, shrinking snowpack, water scarcity, and drought with the Colorado River continuing to dry, and the resulting ramifications for the ski industry and agriculture, both vital to the Colorado economy.

The need is evident for all countries to boost their efforts to cut emissions to save the planet.

Ved Nanda is Distinguished University Professor and director of Ved Nanda Center for International Law at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. His column appears the last Sunday of each month and he welcomes comments at vnanda@law.du.edu

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The Fifth National Climate Assessment — released by the White House on Tuesday — combines thousands of studies and spells out the risks a warming world poses to American society. The last such assessment was released in 2018.

Climate change is “harming physical, mental, spiritual and community health and well-being through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, increasing cases of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water quality and security,” the assessment said.

The lower 48 states since 1970 have warmed by 2.5 degrees compared to the global average of 1.7 degrees, according to the report. The warming has created rising sea levels, increased weather disasters, shrinking water supplies and increased disasters like floods, extreme drought, heatwaves and wildfires.

The impacts of climate change become more devastating with every fraction of a degree that temperatures rise. Since 2018, the Southwest — which includes Colorado — has weathered 31 large climate-related disasters resulting in 700 deaths and more than $67 billion in damage, the assessment states. The disasters in Colorado include the 2021 Marshall fire in Boulder County, ongoing severe drought and dangerous hail storms, like the one that injured concertgoers at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in June.

“Every tenth of a degree of warming that we avoid matters,” Allison Crimmins, director of the assessment, said Wednesday in a call with reporters.

The assessment examines climate change impacts in each of 10 regions. The Southwest faces a future with less water, more difficult agricultural production and more severe fire.

Climate impacts can also make energy production designed to reduce emissions more difficult.  More wildfire smoke makes solar energy less reliable. Less reliable water means less reliable hydropower.

The report states that the U.S. has made significant strides in reducing greenhouse gas emissions but must do more — and quickly — to avert more damage and death.

“One of the first and most important things people can do about climate change is to talk about it,” said Dave White, lead author of the chapter on the Southwest and the director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University.

These are four major impacts of climate change expected in Colorado, according to the report.

Shrinking snowpack

Persistent years of low snow are expected over the next 50 years if climate change continues at its current speed, the assessment states. Snow will be less common at lower elevations and melt earlier in the spring than in the past.

Rocky Mountain snowpack has been declining over the past century but the shrink has accelerated in recent years due to warming trends, White said.

“That water is essential,” White said.

Water from mountain snowpack flows through city faucets, irrigates farmlands and — before it melts — fuels a multi-billion-dollar winter sports industry.

As the snowpack shrinks, the landscape absorbs more of the sun’s heat instead of reflecting it, which further speeds melt.

Less water

Less snow means less runoff in the rivers Colorado relies upon for its water. Less snow, combined with higher temperatures that speed evaporation and drier soils that soak up more moisture, will lead to difficult decisions about how to use and conserve water. Underground aquifers will also refill more slowly with less rainfall and runoff.

The Colorado River — one of the major water sources for the region — continues to dry. Between 1913 and 2017, the river’s annual flow decreased by 9% for every degree Celsius average temperatures rose, the assessment states.

“We had a lot of conversations about the Colorado River but also similar issues that are happening in other river basins in the southwest,” said Elizabeth Koebele, one of the authors of the assessment and an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Long-term aridification — punctuated with serious weather events — will make water supplies more unpredictable. The unpredictability may threaten the region’s ability to consistently use dams to create electricity, disrupting a typically reliable and low-carbon source of energy, the report states.

More difficult farming

Warmer winters will be detrimental to orchard crops, false springs will increase vulnerability to late-season freezes and heatwaves will threaten production. Raising cattle on rangeland will also become more unsustainable as the region becomes more arid.

“Continuing drought and water scarcity will make it more difficult to raise food and fiber in the Southwest without major shifts to new strategies and technologies,” the report states. “Extreme heat events will increase animal stress and reduce crop quality and yield, thereby resulting in widespread economic impacts.”

If the rate of climate change is not slowed, increased temperatures and less water could lead to lower food availability, higher prices and fewer options.

“That’s determined by how we respond to these risks,” White said.

Increased heat will also threaten the health of people who work outside, especially migrant workers who are marginalized from health care and social services. Extreme heat can lead to dehydration and kidney illness while dust storms — which are expected to increase — can impact lung health.

Indigenous communities that have resided for centuries in the Southwest have successfully changed agricultural practices in times of drought, flood and fire, Koebele said.

“We can learn a lot from working with communities that have adapted in the past,” she said.

More severe wildfires

Wildfires in Colorado and across the region have become larger and hotter as the world warms, creating a string of unprecedented blazes.

“High-severity wildfires are expected to continue in coming years, placing the people, economies, ecosystems and water resources of the region at considerable risk,” the report states.

The three largest wildfires in Colorado’s history occurred in 2020. California’s seven largest wildfires all occurred since 2018. The largest fires in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah have all occurred since 2007.

The number of large fires on grassland — like the Marshall fire, which killed two people and destroyed $2 billion in property — has increased fivefold since 1984.

Earlier spring runoff from the mountains due to warming will increase plant growth in the spring, creating more fire fuel during warmer summers. Wildfire smoke poses risks to human health and can make solar energy less productive, as it did in Southern California in 2020.

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Revved-up climate change now permeates Americans’ daily lives with harm that is “already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States,” a massive new government report says.

The National Climate Assessment, which comes out every four to five years, was released Tuesday with details that bring climate change’s impacts down to a local level.

Overall, it paints a picture of a country warming about 60% faster than the world as a whole, one that regularly gets smacked with costly weather disasters and faces even bigger problems in the future.

Since 1970, the Lower 48 states have warmed by 2.5 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) and Alaska has heated up by 4.2 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius), compared to the global average of 1.7 degrees (0.9 degrees Celsius), the report said. But what people really feel is not the averages, but when weather is extreme.

With heat waves, drought, wildfire and heavy downpours, “we are seeing an acceleration of the impacts of climate change in the United States,” said study co-author Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth.

And that’s not healthy.

Climate change is ”harming physical, mental, spiritual, and community health and well-being through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, increasing cases of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water quality and security,” the report said.

Compared to earlier national assessments, this year’s uses far stronger language and “unequivocally” blames the burning of coal, oil and gas for climate change.

The 37-chapter assessment includes an interactive atlas that zooms down to the county level. It finds that climate change is affecting people’s security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk.

In Alaska, which is warming two to three times faster than the global average, reduced snowpack, shrinking glaciers, thawing permafrost, acidifying oceans and disappearing sea ice have affected everything from the state’s growing season, to hunting and fishing, with projections raising questions about whether some Indigenous communities should be relocated.

The Southwest is experiencing more drought and extreme heat – including 31 consecutive days this summer when Phoenix’s daily high temperatures reached or exceeded 110 degrees – reducing water supplies and increasing wildfire risk.

Northeastern cities are seeing more extreme heat, flooding and poor air quality, as well as risks to infrastructure, while drought and floods exacerbated by climate change threaten farming and ecosystems in rural areas.

In the Midwest, both extreme drought and flooding threaten crops and animal production, which can affect the global food supply.

In the northern Great Plains, weather extremes like drought and flooding, as well as declining water resources, threaten an economy dependent largely on crops, cattle, energy production and recreation. Meanwhile, water shortages in parts of the southern Great Plains are projected to worsen, while high temperatures are expected to break records in all three states by midcentury.

In the Southeast, minority and Native American communities — who may live in areas with higher exposures to extreme heat, pollution and flooding — have fewer resources to prepare for or to escape the effects of climate change.

In the Northwest, hotter days and nights that don’t cool down much have resulted in drier streams and less snowpack, leading to increased risk of drought and wildfires. The climate disturbance has also brought damaging extreme rain.

Hawaii and other Pacific islands, as well as the U.S. Caribbean, are increasingly vulnerable to the extremes of drought and heavy rain as well as sea level rise and natural disaster as temperatures warm.

Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb, who wasn’t part of the assessment team, said, “at the center of the report are people — across every region of the country – who have escalating risks associated with climate change as well as clear opportunities for win-win climate action.”

The United States will warm in the future about 40% more than the world as a total, the assessment said. The AP calculated, using others’ global projections, that would slate America to get about 3.8 degrees (2.1 degrees Celsius) hotter by the end of the century.

Hotter average temperatures means weather that is even more extreme.

“The news is not good, but it is also not surprising,” said University of Colorado’s Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist who was not part of this report. “What we are seeing is a manifestation of changes that were anticipated over the last few decades.”

The 2,200-page report comes after five straight months when the globe set monthly and daily heat records. It comes as the U.S. has set a record with 25 different weather disasters this year that caused at least $1 billion in damage.

“Climate change is finally moving from an abstract future issue to a present, concrete, relevant issue. It’s happening right now,” said report lead author Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University. Five years ago, when the last assessment was issued, fewer people were experiencing climate change firsthand.

Surveys this year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show that.

In September, about 9 in 10 Americans (87%) said they’d experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years — drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or flooding. That was up from 79% who said that in April.

Hayhoe said there’s also a new emphasis in the assessment on marginalized communities.

“It is less a matter … of what hits where, but more what hits whom and how well those people can manage the impacts,” said University of Colorado’s Abdalati, whose saw much of his neighborhood destroyed in the 2021 Marshall wildfire.

Biden administration officials emphasize that all is not lost and the report details actions to reduce emissions and adapt to what’s coming.

Americans on every level of government are “stepping up to meet this moment,” said White House science adviser Arati Prabhakar. “All of these actions, taken together, give us hope because they tell us that we can do big things at the scale that’s required, at the scale that the climate actually notices.”

By cleaning up industry, how electricity is made and how transport is powered, climate change can be dramatically reduced. Hausfather said when emissions stops, warming stops, “so we can stop this acceleration if we as a society get our act together.”

But some scientists said parts of the assessment are too optimistic.

“The report’s rosy graphics and outlook obscure the dangers approaching,” Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said. “We are not prepared for what’s coming.”

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Xcel is expanding its work with Pano AI, a San Francisco-based company that will install 21 camera systems by the end of the year on more than 1.5 million acres across the utility’s territory. The objective is to quickly alert Xcel and first responders when smoke is detected.

Pano uses artificial intelligence, or AI, to interpret images from its high-definition cameras that capture 360-degree views, adding data from satellite feeds and other sources to assess the weather and conditions on the ground. The company staffs a center 24/7 where people review information.

“By the end of 2023 we will have installed 21 cameras across the state, both on the Front Range and the Western Slope,” Xcel Energy Colorado President Robert Kenney said Tuesday.

“We understand that wildfires in particular pose a significant and evolving risk to our customers and our communities. Climate conditions continue to change rapidly throughout the western United States,” Kenney added.

Facing larger and more catastrophic wildfires driven by warmer temperatures and drier weather, firefighting agencies and governments around the world are looking to AI to help squelch fires early and reduce fire risks. Pano AI is working with local agencies in western Colorado and has deployed its technology in seven other states as well as in Canada and Australia.

Xcel is expanding its pilot project with Pano that started in Boulder. The two made the announcement at an Arvada Fire Protection District station.

Pano works with fire agencies in areas where its technology is in use, said Arvind Satyam, the company’s co-founder and chief commercial officer.

“It’s a real new tool for us. We’ve been working with Pano for just a few weeks now, but one thing we’re really making strides on is connecting to our dispatch center,” said Steven Parker, fire marshal for the Arvada agency.

The site of the news conference, a suburban fire station, underscored that wildfire threats aren’t limited to the region’s foothills and mountains. Colorado’s most destructive wildfire tore through Louisville, Superior and parts of unincorporated Boulder County on Dec. 30, 2021. The Marshall fire killed two people, destroyed more than 1,000 homes and did more than $2 billion in property damage in an area about 8 miles northeast of the fire station.

Winds of up to 90 mph and parched vegetation fueled the flames.

“For many years we have thought that wildfire was just a threat in forested areas, but that perspective has changed,” Parker said. “Now, we are seeing wildfires burn near and into highly populated areas.”

Kenney wouldn’t speculate about what kind of help Pano’s technology might have been during the Marshall fire. A 17-month investigation by Boulder County authorities said the fire started in two places: on the Twelve Tribes religious cult’s property when embers from an earlier fire reignited; and near part of Xcel’s electrical distribution system, where a power line became loose.

Investigators said they found no evidence that Twelve Tribes members intended to start a fire or that Xcel Energy was negligent.

The utility has disputed that its equipment started one of the fires that merged into one massive wildfire. Nearly 250 area residents, property owners and businesses, as well as more than 150 insurance companies, are suing Xcel Energy for damages and to recover money paid in settlements.

“It’s impossible to speculate on a hypothetical,” Kenney said about whether Pano AI’s system would have made a difference during the Marshall fire.

Going forward, Xcel expects the technology to help spot fires earlier and “direct the right resources with a level of precision much more quickly,” Kenney said.

Other tools in the utility’s firefighting toolbox are inspections of power lines and equipment using drones and helicopters, Kenney said. Inspectors use technology that creates three-dimensional maps of equipment to aid assessments.

Xcel’s wildfire mitigation program includes replacing equipment and clearing vegetation away from lines.

The 21 cameras being installed by Pano AI will be placed in areas considered to be at high risk for wildfires. They are placed at high vantage points about 10 miles apart. Satyam said the cameras continuously rotate 360 degrees, creating a full panorama.

Xcel has a five-year contract with Pano AI. The utility is paying $50,000 per year per camera. Kenney said Xcel will recover the costs as it does with other infrastructure through electric rates, but is also pursuing federal funding.

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In Durango, former firefighter Jonathan Bartley runs a business called DuranGoats, along with partner Adrian Lacasse, and it’s so popular they’re booked daily. Their herd usually works along the wildland-urban interface of the San Juan National Forest, clearing undergrowth around private houses in heavily wooded, steep areas at the town’s periphery.

Thanks to his work, Bartley has come to a conclusion about newcomers to the West: “When people move here thinking ‘I’d love to live in the woods,’ they’re probably making a big mistake.” If they do choose to live surrounded by trees or next to a forest, though, he has advice.

Because utilities cut off electricity during fires, he suggests buying a generator to keep sprinklers for irrigation running. He also advises homeowners to install a metal roof to repel wind-driven sparks. Always, he adds, have a go-bag ready with your most important stuff if flight becomes necessary. Most of all, he wants homeowners to create flame breaks around their house with gravel while also cutting back trees and shrubs within 30 feet of the house.

That last bit of advice is key. Firefighters triage neighborhoods, he said, picking winners and losers. When they scan neighborhoods quickly, they tend to give defensible homes extra resources while deciding that the brushy, overgrown properties are going to be lost causes.

Bartley knows fire well. He worked for a private company called Oregon Woods as part of a hand crew of 20 based in Eugene, Oregon. There, the Holiday Farm Fire started within a half-mile of his house. From that experience, he learned that our approach to wildfire is backward: “We react, rather than manage landscapes ahead of time. Spending a few million dollars on fire mitigation would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars.”

These days, he said, “I’m still fighting fires — just with goats.”

Bartley is quick to point out that fire itself is beneficial to forests. Even Cal-Fire, the firefighting arm of the state of California, says on its website, “Fire removes low-growing underbrush, cleans the forest floor of debris, opens it up to sunlight and nourishes the soil.”

The problem across the West, Bartley said, is so many unmanaged dense forests full of deadfall and brush — “ladder fuels” — that allow fire to climb into tree canopies. “By the time wildfire gets into the treetops to become crown fires,” Bartley said, “firefighters have evacuated and are miles away.”

Everyone knows that western wildfires are becoming worse. Half of the 10 biggest fires in the United States this century all burned in this region. When wildfires grow massive and super-hot, they destroy forest ecosystems, leaving nearly sterilized bare ground that’s perfect for flammable cheatgrass to invade. That sets up burned areas to burn again, often quickly.

Bartley has big ambitions for his goat herd, which can clear a quarter-acre in a day. DuranGoats charges $400 daily, he said, much less than the cost of a crew of landscapers armed with weed whackers and loppers on hilly, broken terrain. Moreover, the goats’ sharp hooves churn the dirt and fertilize it with poop and pee, setting up a regenerative cycle that improves the soil.

In northwestern Montana, former journalist David Reese has a similar business called Montana Goat. His herd moves daily, and once the animals strip leaves off small trees and gobble up the cheatgrass and knapweed, he said, it’s quick work to chainsaw small trees and dead branches.

Like Bartley, Reese has found he has almost more business than he can handle. He plans to scale his herd to 400 goats, while Bartley aims to build up to 100 goats. Both are angling for bigger contracts from homeowners and also government agencies.

Finding four-legged workers is easy. “A male dairy goat has a life expectancy of a week,” said Bartley. “They’re not plump like meat goats, have no dairy value and often are dispatched at birth.”

Extra income for DuranGoats comes from outdoor weddings. Festooned with wildflowers and bells, goats roam the grounds and are a favorite with all the guests, even pitching in as ring-bearers, or in a pinch, groomsmen. But like any single man at a wedding, they have a wandering eye, which means that flower arrangements can be gobbled up quickly.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, Colorado.

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The fire, located in Moffat County 18 miles northwest of Craig, sparked Friday morning and grew rapidly, reaching 6,500 acres in less than eight hours, according to the Moffat County Sheriff’s Office.

Gusty winds, receptive fuel bed, remote, and rugged terrain led to initial large fire growth, Moffat County officials said.

The burn area is a mix of private ranch land and BLM land, according to Moffat County property records.

As of Sunday afternoon, the fire was burning on 7,361 acres and threatening six structures, sheriff officials said in a 2 p.m. news release — the same as Saturday evening.

While officials said Saturday’s high winds could have fueled the fire, causing it to spread as fast as Friday, the increase in cloud cover and precipitation lessened fire behavior and allowed firefighters to increase containment, the release stated.

Overnight, containment jumped from 0% to 30%.

According to Sunday’s update, 45 firefighters are currently on scene at the Iron fire, and they will remain there until the blaze is 100% contained.

The fire is burning in tall grass and sagebrush in a burn scar from 2018, the release stated.

No evacuations have been ordered as of 5 p.m. Sunday, but Moffat County Road 17 is closed from County Road 7 to County Road 3, and County Road 5 is closed from County Road 3 to County Road 7 for firefighter activity.

The Iron fire was burning on an estimated 6,504 acres as of 8 p.m., according to BLM fire maps. The burn area is a mix of private ranch land and BLM land, according to Moffat County property records. Information on whether structures were threatened by the fire was not immediately available.

The fire was first reported at 11:56 a.m. and early updates from the Moffat County Sheriff’s Office estimated the fire at only 170 acres, but high winds caused the fire to spread, said BLM Colorado Communications Director Steven Hall.

The cause of the fire is unknown and fire crews did not achieve any containment late Friday, according to the BLM.

Crews are working to suppress the fire, Hall said. Resources fighting the fire include eight small-engine air tankers, two helicopters, fire engines, BLM crews and Moffat County motor graders, according to the sheriff’s office.

The fire is burning in tall grass and sagebrush in a burn scar from 2018, according to the sheriff’s office.

The National Weather Service’s Grand Junction office issued a Red Flag Warning for most of the Western Slope through Saturday night, with gusty winds, low humidity and dry fuels expected. A Red Flag Warning means weather conditions that can contribute to extreme fire behavior are occurring or will soon, according to the agency.

Winds of 25 to 35 mph with gusts of up to 45 mph are forecasted.

This is a developing story. 

Firefighters and startups are using AI-enabled cameras to scan the horizon for signs of smoke. A German company is building a constellation of satellites to detect fires from space. And Microsoft is using AI models to predict where the next blaze could be sparked.

With wildfires becoming larger and more intense as the world warms, firefighters, utilities and governments are scrambling to get ahead of the flames by tapping into the latest AI technology — which has stirred both fear and excitement for its potential to transform life. While increasingly stretched first responders hope AI offers them a leg up, humans are still needed to check that the tech is accurate.

California’s main firefighting agency this summer started testing an AI system that looks for smoke from more than 1,000 mountaintop camera feeds and is now expanding it statewide.

The system is designed to find “abnormalities” and alert emergency command centers, where staffers will confirm whether it’s indeed smoke or something else in the air.

“The beauty of this is that it immediately pops up on the screen and those dispatchers or call takers are able to interrogate that screen” and determine whether to send a crew, said Phillip SeLegue, staff chief of intelligence for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The cameras, part of a network that workers previously had to watch, provide billions of bytes of data for the AI system to digest. While humans still need to confirm any smoke sightings, the system helps reduce fatigue among staffers typically monitoring multiple screens and cameras, alerting them to look only when there’s possible fire or smoke, SeLegue said.

It’s already helped. A battalion chief got a smoke alert in the middle of the night, confirmed it on his cellphone and called a command center in San Diego to scramble first responders to the remote area.

The dispatchers said that if they hadn’t been alerted, the fire would have been much larger because it likely wouldn’t have been noticed until the next morning, SeLegue said.

San Francisco startup Pano AI takes a similar approach, mounting cameras on cell towers that scan for smoke and alert customers, including fire departments, utility companies and ski resorts.

The cameras use computer vision machine learning, a type of AI.

“They’re trained very specifically to detect smoke or not, and we train them with images of smoke and images of not smoke,” CEO Sonia Kastner said.

The images are combined with feeds from government weather satellites that scan for hotspots, along with other data sources, such as social media posts.

The technology gets around one of the main problems in the traditional way of detecting wildfires — relying on 911 calls from passers-by that need confirmation from staffers before crews and water-dropping planes can be deployed.

“Generally, only one in 20 of these 911 calls are actually a wildfire. Even during fire season, it might be a cloud or fog or a barbecue,” Kastner said.

Pano AI’s systems do still rely on final confirmation, with managers playing a time lapse of the camera feed to ensure it’s smoke rising.

For fighting forest fires, “technology is becoming really essential,” said Larry Bekkedahl, senior vice president of energy delivery at Portland General Electric, Oregon’s largest utility and a Pano AI customer.

Utility companies sometimes play a role in sparking wildfires, when their power lines are knocked down by wind or struck by falling trees. Hawaii’s electric utility acknowledged that its power lines started a devastating blaze in Maui this summer after apparently being downed by high winds.

PGE, which provides electricity to 51 cities in Oregon, has deployed 26 Pano AI cameras, and Bekkedahl said they have helped speed up response and coordination with emergency services.

Previously, fire departments were “running around looking for stuff and not even really knowing exactly where it’s at,” he said. The cameras help detect fires quicker and get teams on the ground faster, shaving up to two hours off response times.

“That’s significant in terms of how fast that fire can can spread and grow,” Bekkedahl said.

Using AI to detect smoke from fires “is relatively easy,” said Juan Lavista Ferres, chief data scientist at Microsoft.

“What is not easy is to have enough cameras that cover enough places,” he said, pointing to vast, remote areas in northern Canada that have burned this summer.

Ferres’ team at Microsoft has been developing AI models to predict where fires are likely to start. They have fed the model with maps of areas that burned previously, along with climate and geospatial data.

The system has its limitations — it can’t predict random events like a lightning strike. But it can sift through historical weather and climate data to identify patterns, such as areas that are typically drier. Even a road, which indicates people are nearby, is a risk factor, Ferres said.

“It’s not going to get it all perfectly right,” he said. “But what it can do is it can build a probability map (based on) what happened in the past.”

The technology, which Microsoft plans to offer as an open source tool, can help first responders trying to figure out where to focus their limited resources, Ferres said.

Another company is looking to the heavens for a solution. German startup OroraTech analyzes satellite images with artificial intelligence.

Taking advantage of advances in camera, satellite and AI technology, OroraTech has launched two mini satellites about the size of a shoebox into low orbit, about 550 kilometers (340 miles) above Earth’s surface. The Munich-based company has ambitions to send up eight more next year and eventually put 100 into space.

As wildfires swept central Chile this year, OroraTech said it provided thermal images at night when aerial drones are used less frequently.

Weeks after OroraTech launched its second satellite, it detected a fire near the community of Keg River in northern Alberta, where flames burned remote stretches of boreal forest repeatedly this summer.

“There are algorithms on the satellite, very efficient ones to detect fires even faster,” CEO Thomas Gruebler said.

The AI also takes into account vegetation and humidity levels to identify flare-ups that could spawn devastating megafires. The technology could help thinly stretched firefighting agencies direct resources to blazes with the potential to cause the most damage.

“Because we know exactly where the fires are, we can see how the fires will propagate,” Gruebler said. “So, which fire will be the big fire in one day and which will stop on their own.”

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed.

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Evacuation are lifted and roadblocks open except no driving onto Mt Shadows Dr. Residents may walk in. Video from earlier drop. pic.twitter.com/UhNbT5DoL9

— GarCo Sheriff (@GarcoSheriffCO) September 23, 2023

The Mountain Shadows subdivision and residents north of Donegan Road in Glenwood Springs were asked to evacuate immediately, according to the Sheriff’s Office in a 2:20 p.m. update on Facebook.

The evacuation was lifted about 5 p.m.

Residents were able to walk into the neighborhood, as driving on Mountain Shadow Drive was still not allowed

The brush fire is in West Glenwood Springs and was threatening structures. There was active flames and visible smoke, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Residents are being evacuated to the Glenwood Springs Mall.

The region recorded 26 days of ozone levels that exceeded the 2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standards between June 1 and Aug. 31, which is considered the summer ozone season. That is the lowest total of days with high ozone since 2019, when the region recorded 22 days, according to Regional Air Quality Council data.

The Front Range’s air quality benefitted from an unusually wet and cool start to summer, said Scott Landes, air quality meteorologist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

“Ozone really thrives in hot and dry conditions, which we really didn’t have in the first half of the summer,” Landes said.

On top of the cooler start to summer, wildfires were kept to a minimum in the West, and weather patterns sent smoke from large wildfires in Canada toward the eastern United States, he said.

“In some respects, we got lucky this year,” Landes said. “With climate change particularly, summers have been hotter and that’s going to lead to higher ozone. We have long-term drought across the western U.S., and that’s going to lead to more wildfires. That smoke could enhance ozone concentrations. So we have a lot of stuff that works against us.”

Reducing the number of days when ground-level ozone blankets the Front Range with thick smog is critical because the region is in violation of federal air quality standards. The Environmental Protection Agency categorized the region as a severe non-attainment zone in September 2022, and that label will result in stricter regulations for businesses, including the oil and gas industry, and higher gasoline prices for drivers.

High levels of ozone pollution harm human health because it is harder to breathe, especially for the young, elderly and those with chronic respiratory problems.

Ozone pollution is formed on hot summer days when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds combine and react to high heat. Those pollutants are released by refineries, automobiles, power plants and other sources.

The Front Range has two benchmarks to meet to satisfy the EPA.

First, it needs to reduce annual ozone pollution averages to 75 parts per billion by 2027 to meet a 2008 standard. But it also is failing to meet the more stringent 2015 requirement to lower averages to 70 parts per billion.

Mike Silverstein, the Regional Air Quality Council’s executive director, said his agency is forecasting the region can meet the 2027 deadline. But, he said, “we are not projecting attainment for the tougher standard.”

The state is working to reduce air pollution with goals to lower emissions from oil and gas production and by trying to reduce the number of gas-powered cars on the roads through tax credits for electric vehicles and free public transportation in July and August.

Silverstein attributed the 2023 air quality improvement, in part, to these efforts.

August brought its typical hot, dry weather, but the number of days when ozone pollution exceeded federal standards didn’t jump to excessive numbers during the month, he said.

“We bounce up and down, depending on the meteorology,” Silverstein said. “But it also has to do with our emission-control programs. Those have an impact.”

But there is much work to be done, environmentalists say.

“The way I think of it is, ‘Great, we had fewer ozone alerts and ozone days than we had in recent years,'” said Kirsten Schatz, clean air advocate for the Colorado Public Interest Research Group.  “But we got lucky with the weather. We can’t count on the weather from year to year to save us from ozone pollution.”

Colorado needs to continue taking steps to reduce harmful emissions from the oil and gas industry and to keep encouraging people to find alternate modes of travel to gas-powered cars, Schatz said.

She also has worked with the state on a plan to eliminate gas-powered lawn and garden equipment because of the pollution created by lawnmowers, weed trimmers, chainsaws and leaf blowers. The Regional Air Quality Council has sent a proposal to the state’s Air Quality Control Commission that would restrict the use of such equipment along the northern Front Range. The commission will consider it next week during its September meeting.

“It is shockingly polluting,” she said. “We can get a lot of the cuts we need by eliminating the dirty gas-powered lawn and garden equipment.”

Taking steps to eliminate human-caused pollution is the only reliable way to improve air quality, Schatz said.

“Every amount of ozone pollution we can cut from the air has a real benefit to our health,” she said. “That will help ensure whether we have sunny skies or cloudy skies that we have air that is safer to breathe.”

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