By james art 
In early January, the scene was raised for a fire disaster in Los Angeles. For a long, hot summer, the plants and vegetation dried, making it more frustrated. The land conditions were dragged as winter rains had not arrived yet. Then came the powerful winds of Santa Anna, gusting over 80 miles per hour.
The result was more than 16,000 homes, and the buildings were destroyed after the rapidly moving fires of Ethan and Palisades broke out. Under these extreme conditions, firefighters had little hope to control the flames.
New studies are finding fingerprints of climate change in these fires, which has worsened some of the extreme conditions. In particular, the hotter temperatures and the drier atmosphere can be associated with heat capture gases, which largely come from fossil combustion, according to two different analyzes from the University of California, Los Angeles and the world attribution of meteorological Conditions, cooperation of international scientists.
However, for other extreme conditions that led to Los Angeles’ fires, with the strong winds of Santa Anna and the lack of rain, the distinction of the role of climate change is scientifically complicated.
Although it may be related to climate change, it is more difficult to recognize, given the highly variable time of the state, which is usually swinging from wet to dry years. The powerful computer models that scientists use to analyze climate effects also fight very small geographical areas or complex processes, such as wild fire behavior.
Climatologists are developing ways to determine the role of climate change in wild fires. However, the most significant human influence could be how fires began, since there were no lightning storms at the time that would ignite the fires.
“The ignition is undoubtedly due to human activity,” says Alex Hall, director of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. “So basically I think these fires are anthropogenic. They are created.
Thirsty atmosphere
Los Angeles’s summer heat continued until late last fall last fall, including a Sept. September heat waveS The period from June to December has been ranked as the third of the hottest since 1895.
A hot atmosphere is a more lively atmosphere. Dry air removes moisture from the plants, which makes them more susceptible to burning. For small vegetation like herbs, drying only takes hours. For bigger things like trees or even wood in fences and decks, it can take days or months.
The dryness of Los Angeles’s vegetation before the fires is due to both the hot temperatures and the lack of rain. UCLA analysis It has found that about a quarter of this moisture deficiency is due to the extreme heat, which is influenced by climate change.
“The fact that today we have a warmer or drier atmosphere, as global warming is very likely to cause large fuels such as dead logs and fenceds and other materials you find in the urban environment for more dry than they would be otherwise”, Says Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist at UCLA. “These fires are very likely more intensity and dangerous in the urban environment due to global warming.”
Another analysis of the world attribution of time found that hot, dry conditions were about 35% more likely due to climate change measured by Fire Time Indexwhich examines temperature, humidity and other meteorological factors.
Wind and rain
Winds were the biggest factor for the explosive growth of fires in Los Angeles, sending showers of broths to neighborhoods that light the homes.
“The wind speed was incredibly, incredibly strong and we had incredibly dry fuel,” says John Abaco, Professor of Climatology at the University of California, Merced. “So realistic, it was a perfect storm when it comes to fire disasters.”
Santa Anna’s wind blows when there is a high pressure zone over the southwestern United States that pushes the air to southern California and chases it through the mountains near Los Angeles. Often this warms the air and accelerates wind speed, leading to dangerous fire conditions. Scientists are working on understanding how the conditions that create these winds can be shifted when the climate warms up but There is still no clear answerS Conditions may reduce or displace time.
“Whether climate change is affected or not, it is very uncertain, very, very complicated,” Williams says.
The impact of climate change on rainfall in southern California is another challenging question. California saw a wet winter before the one that caused the accumulation of dense vegetation. This severe vegetation remained dry this winter under land conditions.
“We usually get our first rains, maybe around November, and that’s what kills the fire season, but we didn’t have that rain,” Hall says.
Hall says that precipitation deficit this winter in Los Angeles was an event with 1 in 50 years, which means there is a 2% chance of happening in a year. However, whether the climate change has played a role in this is not yet known. Climate uses sophisticated computer models to predict the effects of climate change, but the location of California on the globe makes it difficult to distinguish what will happen.
“It is supposed that the greater part of Mexico will dry and the Seattle is intended to get wet and we are right between these two areas,” Williams says. “If our models are excluded only a little, California can become either more dry or more humid. And at the same time, the models make a project that rainfall will become more extreme in the future, which would lead to wet years to get wet and get wet and To get wet and the dry years become dry.
California rainfall is also naturally highly variable, with huge changes between wet and dry conditions year to year. This makes it difficult to choose a model and the most rainfall records are returned only at the end of the 1800s.
“This means that we need a much longer recording to look at things like rainfall trends to find the impact of climate change just because the natural swings are so big,” says Hall.
Climatologists are working on improving climate change models in order to better simulate the conditions of fire on a lower scale. This can help areas like Los Angeles get a better look at their future.
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