gigafire en · NOUN
Etymology
From giga- + fire.
Meanings
-
(neologism) A wildfire which burns more than one million acres.
In a historic fire season with million-acre gigafires and more than two dozen deaths, the destruction in Happy Camp barely broke through the long list of dire news stories making the headlines.
2020 October 23, Vivian Ho, “Fire tore through the Karuk tribe's homeland. Many won't be able to rebuild”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 09 Feb 2023:When we coined the term "megafire" for wildfires that exceed 100,000 acres, it was in the back of our mind that if a fire reached 1 million acres it would be called a "gigafire".
[2018 October 26, Bill Gabbert, “Bushfire in Australia burns over 2 million acres, becoming a "gigafire"”, in Wildfire Today, archived from the original on 31 Aug 2022:In addition, due in part to human-caused warming and a drying climate, California recorded its first "gigafire" since modern records began in the early 1930s.
2020 October 5, Andrew Freedman, “California sees first ever ’gigafire’ and passes 4 million acres burned”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 02 Dec 2022:Just a few years ago, fire scientists thought that the burn scars of all these megafires and gigafires might help check future spread, theorizing that it would take a while for the landscape to recover and that what would grow back could prove less flammable than what burned originally.
2022 August 24, David Wallace-Wells, “The American West's Haunting, Smoke-Filled Future”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 May 2023:From Category 5 hurricanes to flooding from sea-level rise to gigafires, the value of losses from severe weather or climate-related disasters in the United States over the past several years has been unprecedented.
2021 October 13, Mark Brennan, Tanaya Srini, Justin Steil, Miho Mazereeuw, Larisa Ovalles, “A Perfect Storm? Disasters and Evictions”, in Housing Policy Debate, volume 32, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 53:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| gigafires | Number=Plur | lexicographic |