An analysis released Tuesday found that the destructive wildfires in Los Angeles were caused by human-driven climate change, which decreased rainfall, dried out vegetation, and increased the risky overlap between strong Santa Ana winds and flammable drought conditions.
Dozens of researchers conducted the study, which found that using fossil fuels induced global warming that increased the likelihood of the fire-prone conditions that fueled the blazes by about 35 percent.
“Climate change increased the risk of the devastating LA wildfires,” said Clair Barnes of Imperial College London, who was the study’s principal author and collaborator with the global academic partnership World Weather Attribution.
“As winter draws nearer, there is a greater chance that fires will start during powerful Santa Ana winds, which have the power to turn minor sparks into fatal infernos.
“Without a faster transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, California will continue to get hotter, drier, and more flammable.”
Anticipated to get worse
In the report, the direct causes of the flames that broke out around Los Angeles on January 7—the most catastrophic in the city’s history—that destroyed over 10,000 homes and killed at least 29 people are not discussed.
Investigators are looking into Southern California Edison’s involvement in the Eaton Fire, one of the fires.
In order to evaluate how such occurrences have changed in the current climate, which has warmed by about 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 degrees Celsius) over pre-industrial levels, researchers instead examined weather data and climate models.
They discovered, using peer-reviewed techniques, that climate change increased the likelihood of hot, dry, and windy conditions by 1.35 times.
The report cautions that similar fire-weather events in January will become an additional 35% more common under current projections, where global warming exceeds 4.7F (2.6C) by 2100.
Rainfall from October to December has traditionally signaled the end of the wildfire season.
But in recent decades, these rains have diminished.
According to the study, the likelihood of minimal rainfall during these months is now 2.4 times higher during neutral El Nino circumstances, which means that drier, combustible conditions will last until December and January, when the Santa Ana wind season peaks.
Uncertainty Areas
Uncertainty surrounds the connection between climate change and Santa Ana winds, which originate in western deserts before drying up and heating up as they go down California’s mountains.
Some research indicate that hot Santa Ana wind occurrences and very strong years will continue, even though the majority of studies forecast a drop in these winds as the climate warms.
The two rainy winters in 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 that preceded this year’s fires encouraged the growth of brush and grass. But because there wasn’t much rain this winter, the vegetation was dry and extremely flammable.
Extreme changes from extremely wet to extremely dry circumstances, referred to as “precipitation whiplash,” are increasingly occurring on a global scale. A warmer environment causes these fluctuations because it can retain and release more moisture, which exacerbates