A curious item in the July 20 Science X Newsletter says “Africa’s wildfire season is actually getting shorter, scientists think they know why”. And there’s more to it than meets the eye. A lot more. For starters, “Africa is home to around 70% of the world’s burned area - scorched by wildfires each year” which is quite the share given that Africa only accounts for about 20% of Earth’s land area. You could be forgiven, if you read newspapers or the modern equivalent, for believing that about half the planet is on fire at any given time. But actually 70% of the burned area is in 20% of the total area meaning only 30% of the burned area is in the remaining 80%. Also remarkable is that climate change is not to blame. Or maybe not so remarkable, since all effects of climate change are bad and everything bad is due to climate change, but a shorter fire season in Africa is good.

According to the article, in Phys.org:

“A new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests one important reason why. Rather than looking at how much rain falls each year, researchers found that ‘when’ rain falls may play an even bigger role in controlling wildfire activity.”

The scare quotes around “when” are hard to explain. So is why anyone would really be surprised to find that if it rains just as wildfires are getting going it’s probably going to have more of an impact on them than if it mostly comes after they’ve mostly gone out. But here’s what really caught our eye:

“the researchers analyzed daily rainfall records from three independent datasets covering 1990–2023. They then compared these with satellite observations of burned area and fire counts between 2003 and 2022, allowing them to investigate how shifts in rainfall lined up with changes in wildfire activity across both northern and southern Africa. The results show a clear pattern. Across the continent, the dry season has become shorter over the past three decades, mainly because it is starting later than it used to. In northern Africa, the onset of the dry season has been delayed by around 1.75 days every decade, while southern Africa has seen a smaller delay of about 0.4 days per decade.”

Now that’s a measurable shift, unlike a lot of things people holler about being a clear marker of manmade climate change and it turns out there’s no detectable trend (global droughts) or it’s the other way (hurricanes). So what caused it?

OK, at the end they throw in the obligatory:

“The study also highlights an important reminder that climate change doesn’t simply alter how much rain falls; it can also reshape when it falls. Those shifts in seasonal timing may have major consequences for ecosystems, even if annual rainfall changes only slightly.”

In fact, of course, climate change doesn’t alter how much rain falls or “when” it does. Climate change is a statistical description of ways in which weather has changed, and to say that changes in the weather have caused changes in the weather is imbecilic, if common. But the main point is, something good happened and they don’t know why. But they do not, absolutely do not, credit the same human GHGs they would infallibly say were clearly responsible if, say, the rainy season in Africa had moved away from fire season not toward it.

Just as, we note, climate change killed off sea stars decades ago. But now they’re back and climate change has nothing to do with it.