Unusually hot summer days and nights have become more common across the contiguous United States over the last few decades.

Wildland fire regimes are a function of the interactions between vegetation, land use, and climate. Climate change, through increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation may result in changes to fire behavior, occurrence and severity. In the western United States, which is currently undergoing a severe drought, the fire season is already longer now than it was several decades ago, and the region experiences many more large-scale fires.