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Italy wildfires encircle Palermo as temperatures hit 47C
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Spontaneous combustion like in moist haybales or as described in the article you linked, via fermentation sure does exist, not really in the wild. Like in a forest. The entire wikipedia page is about specific circumstances, none of which happen naturally.
Eg there shouldn't be any manure piles out causing wild fires. If there are, its again caused by idiots.
I dont have numbers on rock sparks causing fires but it kinda sounds exceedingly rare?
Like all of these points seem like they would be a fraction of a fraction of the causes for forest fires.
By and large, firest will not self ignite. If you see a raging fire on the news, its overwhelmingly unlikely to be anything but an idiot to blame.
Yeah, it’s definitely very rare. I can’t seem to find that article right now, but I remember reading that these events account for something like 0.1–0.3% of all wildfires. So while insignificant as an actual cause in general, with 100k+ wildfires happening each year it means that a couple of hundreds per year should still be caused by those. Which is still like one every 1-2 days on average.
Not enough to be a noticeable threat, but enough to cause a pedantic comment mentioning those as existing :)