In the 1990s, pyroCbs were a disturbing but exhilarating novelty wondered at, and discussed by, a small group of meteorologists. Now, they are not only a signature of major wildfires, they are actively growing in size and frequency—to the point that they are mimicking volcanoes, previously Earth’s most rapid and powerful climate-changing agents.

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Reefs in the Caribbean were dying. Some were being done in by development, others by overfishing and pollution. Two of the region’s dominant reef-builders—staghorn coral and elkhorn coral—were being devastated by an ailment that became known as white-band disease. (Both are now classified as critically endangered.) Over the course of the 1980s,

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