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A new analysis by UCLA climate scientists with wildfire expertise links climate change to approximately a quarter of the extreme vegetation dryness when the Palisades and Eaton fires began.
Read the analysis: Climate change a factor in unprecedented L.A. fires
Key takeaways include:
- Climate change may be linked to roughly a quarter of the extreme fuel moisture deficit when the fires began.
- The fires still would have been extreme without climate change, but probably somewhat smaller and less intense.
- Given the inevitability of continued climate change, wildfire mitigation should be oriented around (1) aggressive suppression of human ignitions when extreme fire weather is predicted, (2) home hardening strategies, and (3) urban development in low wildfire risk zones.
UCLA climate scientists Alex Hall, Park Williams, Gavin Madakumbura and others at UCLA's Climate & Wildfire Research Initiative consider the factors that contributed to the fire, "to quantify how unusual these factors are, in the context of the natural weather and climate variability." They explore and provide numbers and context to the two wet winters, the long dry spell, the fuel-moisture changes and the extreme Santa Ana winds. They conclude with the role of climate change:
"We believe that the fires would still have been extreme without the climate change components noted above, but would have been somewhat smaller and less intense. Continued climate change is inevitable over the coming decades, and therefore so is the expectation of even more intense wildfires when all of the other necessary conditions for fire occur (e.g. fuel abundance, dryness, extreme winds, and ignitions). Thus wildfire mitigation should be oriented around factors we can control, and the damages we can prevent."
