Conditions that fueled L.A. fires were 35% more likely because of climate change, scientists find

Climate change increased the likelihood of the extreme conditions that allowed the recent fires to roar across the Los Angeles area, an international group of scientists said Tuesday. 

The hot, dry and windy conditions that preceded the fires were about 35% more likely because of human-caused global warming, according to a new report from the World Weather Attribution group, which analyzes the influence of global warming on extreme events.  

The fires, which started during a ferocious windstorm and after almost no rain had fallen in greater Los Angeles since the spring, have killed at least 29 people and torched more than 16,000 buildings, including homes, stores and schools. 

“This was a perfect storm when it comes to conditions for fire disasters — the ingredients in terms of the climate enabling, the weather driving the fires and the huge built environment right downwind from where these ignitions occurred,” John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at the University of California, Merced, who contributed to the report, said at a news conference.

Compared to a preindustrial time before fossil fuels were widely used, there are now 23 extra days of “dry season” on average each year in the Los Angeles region, the report said, making it more likely that fires will coincide with seasonal Santa Ana winds.

Park Williams, a professor of geography at UCLA and an author of the report, said fires during cool seasons in Southern California require four conditions: widespread grass or brush that can burn, abnormally dry conditions, an ignition (which almost always comes from a person; and extreme weather, like the recent windstorm. He described each of those conditions as an individual switch in a system that requires all four to be flipped on for light to emanate.

“The artificial warming due to human-caused climate change is making the light brighter,” Williams said. 

The authors of the report analyzed weather and climate models to evaluate how a warmer atmosphere is shifting the likelihood of fire weather (meaning conditions that increase the risk of wildfire). They also tracked how a metric called the Fire Weather Index changed over time. The index tracks temperature, relative humidity and wind speeds, all factors that contribute to the likelihood of fire. 

The researchers found that the kind of conditions that drove the L.A. area fires are expected to occur on average once in 17 years in today’s climate. Such conditions would have been expected once every 23 years without climate change and would have been less extreme when they did occur, the report says.

Homes destroyed in the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles.Mario Tama / Getty Images

As a group, World Weather Attribution is a loose consortium of scientists who publish rapid findings about climate change’s role in extreme weather events. Although their research methods are peer-reviewed, this specific rapid analysis has not been through the rigor of a typical academic review process, which can take months or longer. The group’s prior analyses of heat, wildfire and hurricane disasters have held up to scrutiny after initial release and were ultimately published in academic journals.

For climate attribution scientists studying how much climate change is to blame for specific events, wildfire disasters are notoriously challenging to untangle, and local nuances are extremely important. 

In the case of the recent California fires, the report's authors found that although climate change played a role, it was not the sole factor. 

The hillsides surrounding Los Angeles are filled with brush that has evolved to burn with regularity, and more people are in these areas today than in the past to potentially start fires via cigarettes, power lines, fireworks, vehicles or other sources. Additionally, neighborhood development has pushed deep into areas prone to burn, which means houses are serving as fuel for wildfires and contributing to its rapid spread.

“Fire in Southern California is highly complex, right? It’s a combination of a number of things. This is a landscape that’s got a really distinct human imprint on it,” Abatzoglou said, adding that the Los Angeles region has “a large population, a lot of ignitions, a lot of land-use related issues.” 

The influence of climate change on the Santa Ana winds, one of the driving factors behind the Los Angeles fires, remains murky. The report's authors said that some research suggests the winds will become less intense as the climate warms; however, other research suggests this wind pattern will persist and perhaps intensify during the cold months. 

“We don’t know of a direct mechanism that would link climate change to the winds, but there could be," Williams said. "We just don’t know."