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With California's wildfires ravaging more than 4 million acres—an unimaginable catastrophe—it's clear that a new term is needed to capture the scale of this disaster. Enter the word 'gigafire.'
The August Complex wildfire in California, which is currently being labeled a gigafire, has already consumed 1 million acres of land. This term exceeds 'megafire,' which refers to fires burning over 100,000 acres.
The August Complex, sparked by lightning strikes, is California’s first-ever gigafire, though not the first in the United States. In 2004, the Taylor Complex in Alaska burned 1.3 million acres, and in 1988, the Yellowstone Fire scorched 1.58 million acres in Montana and Idaho.
A complex refers to a collection of smaller fires that may or may not merge together. The August Complex started as 300 separate fires that eventually merged into one.
The term gigafire is believed to have first appeared in the comments section of the Wildfire Today website. In 2017, a user named “kevin9” suggested that fires burning over 1 million acres should be called gigafires. The site began applying the term to wildfires in Australia that reached or surpassed that scale.
The record-breaking wildfire devastation this year is thought to be worsened by climate change, with hotter and drier conditions offering an ideal environment for fires to start and spread. As of Monday, firefighters had contained about 65 percent of the California fire.
