The fires that devastated neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, killing 28 people and burning over 16,000 homes and buildings are not a one-off, according to a new rapid analysis. And researchers say they are now significantly more likely to happen due to climate change.Â
The shocking scenes of fires lapping up city blocks in North America’s third largest metropolis are driving home just how close the climate crisis is bringing extreme weather to people and communities. The new study, from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, says the conditions behind the fires were about 35 per cent more likely compared to pre-industrial times.
If global warming continues along current trajectories, the fire conditions will be another 35 per cent more likely by the year 2100 — painting a bleak picture for the future of L.A. and southern California.
“Without a faster transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, California will continue to get hotter, drier and more flammable,” said Clair Barnes, a co-author of the WWA report and researcher at Imperial College London.
As Southern California gets some much-needed rain, a new analysis suggests the conditions that led to January’s wildfires were 35 per cent more likely because of human-fuelled climate change. And the more likely those fires become, the more expensive insurance will get for everyone.
The study, carried out by an international team of 32 researchers, used global climate models to project how weather conditions driving the fires have changed since pre-industrial times. To be published quickly, the study has not been peer-reviewed or been published in a scientific journal, but is based on established attribution methods.
These conditions are now expected to happen once every 17 years, although they will happen more frequently as global temperatures continue to rise.
Put more simply, climate change delayed rains and intensified the hot and dry conditions that turned the vegetation around L.A. into fuel, and then strong winds made those fires go where they normally don’t. All this will become more likely as global temperatures keep rising.
Delayed winter rain extends fire season
“The delayed onset of winter rains is a significant problem because it ends up extending the length of the fire season, which means that there’s that many more opportunities for weather events like these wind events to align with ignitions,” said John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at the University of California Merced and one of the study co-authors.Â
He noted that when all of these things line up, there’s a greater risk that one of the resulting fires becomes “very difficult to suppress.”
The dry conditions also came after a couple years where California saw more rain, which led to more vegetation growing in the area. Abatzoglou says that means even more fuel is available to burn, allowing the fire to spread.
And the underlying conditions are all set to get worse. Low rainfall from October to December is now 2.4 times more likely, according to the WWA report, driving up the risk of dry, fire-prone vegetation. It also means that the dry conditions are coinciding more closely with the strong Santa Ana winds, which helped spread these fires and generally peak between December and January.
In total the dry, fire-prone conditions in southern California have extended by about 23 days every year, increasing the risk to cities like L.A., according to the study.
Abatzoglou says he hopes that the destructive fires will act as a wake-up call for the state to be prepared to face these conditions the next time they happen.
“Because there will be a next time.”
