Climate change did not ignite the recent blazes that engulfed swathes of Los Angeles this month. But it did make them worse in at least one key way, a rapid analysis has found.
The fires that erupted on 7 January astounded officials as they ballooned in size in mere hours, torching famous neighbourhoods, forcing 190,000 people to evacuate and taking 28 lives.
President Donald Trump has been engaged in a spat with state governor and political foe Gavin Newsom about who is to blame for the fires before the two had an apparently amicable meeting on Friday.
The early sparks were fanned into infernos by the now infamous Santa Ana winds – hot, dry winds most common in winter, which reached 99mph. Scientists do not yet understand if climate change disrupts these parching winds.
But global warming made the hot and dry conditions that drove the ferocious fires about 35% more likely and 6% more intense, a global network of 32 scientists at World Weather Attribution (WWA) said today.
The world is already on average 1.3C hotter than before humans started burning fossil fuels at scale.
Around Los Angeles, the hotter air dried out the shrubby vegetation in the area called chaparral, turning it into tinderbox material that feeds a fast-moving fire.
They also found the fire season, with highly flammable drought conditions, in Los Angeles lasts 23 days longer per year, and that low rainfall between October and December is more than twice as likely.
While climate change influenced these two trends, they cannot yet quantify the extent, due to the complex local geography and a lack of data, they said.
Dr Clair Barnes from WWA and Imperial College London said: “Drought conditions are more frequently pushing into winter, increasing the chance a fire will break out during strong Santa Ana winds that can turn small ignitions into deadly infernos.
“Without a faster transition away…
