In 2020, California’s Creek Fire became so intense that it generated its own thunderstorm, a phenomenon called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. For years, scientists struggled to replicate these explosive fire-born storms in climate models, leaving major gaps in understanding their global effects. Now, a new study has finally simulated them successfully, reproducing the Creek Fire’s storm and others like it.
In 2020, California’s Creek Fire became so intense that it generated its own thunderstorm, a phenomenon called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. For years, scientists struggled to replicate these explosive fire-born storms in climate models, leaving major gaps in understanding their global effects. Now, a new study has finally simulated them successfully, reproducing the Creek Fire’s storm and others like it. In 2020, California’s Creek Fire became so intense that it generated its own thunderstorm, a phenomenon called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. For years, scientists struggled to replicate these explosive fire-born storms in climate models, leaving major gaps in understanding their global effects. Now, a new study has finally simulated them successfully, reproducing the Creek Fire’s storm and others like it.