The rampant wildfires that have been affecting the Southeast over the last month have caused a lot of heartache. Certainly some of the blame for the wildfires can be put on the exceptional drought that is occurring over the region (which may in turn be partly linked to the weak La Niña occurring now), and some may also be placed on forest management practices which have kept natural fires from clearing out underbrush which served as tinder for the recent fires. One question that people have asked following the fires is how often they are likely to occur and if that will change over time. Here are two articles which have addressed that in recent publications.
Chelsea Harvey of the Washington Post reported on the recent fires and points to an increase in droughts over time as a sign that fires may become more frequent in the future here.
Erin Blakemore in Popular Science pointed to the record-setting seasonal temperatures plus the number of dry days as part of the cause of the drought and also discusses the trend towards warmer temperatures in recent decades in https://www.popsci.com/why-wildfires-are-ravaging-southeast-this-fall.
