AUSTYN GAFFNEY
The writer is a reporter covering climate and a member of the Times Fellowship class
As Los Angeles burned for days on end, horrifying the nation, scientists made an announcement on Friday that could help explain the deadly conflagration: 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history.
With temperatures rising around the world and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the planet has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.
The firestorms ravaging the country’s second-largest city are just the latest spasm of extreme weather that is growing more furious as well as more unpredictable. Wildfires are highly unusual in Southern California in January, which is supposed to be the rainy season. The same is true for cyclones in Appalachia, where Hurricanes Helene and Milton shocked the country when they tore through mountain communities in October.
Wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster. Storms are getting bigger and carrying more moisture. And soaring temperatures worldwide are leading to heat waves and drought, which can be devastating on their own and leave communities vulnerable to dangers such as mudslides when heavy rains return.
Around the world, extreme weather and searing heat killed thousands of people last year and displaced millions, with pilgrims dying as temperatures soared in Saudi Arabia. In Europe, extreme heat contributed to at least 47,000 deaths in 2023. In the United States, heat-related deaths have doubled in recent decades.
“We’re in a new era now,” said former Vice President Al Gore, who has warned of the threats of global warming for decades. “These climate related extreme events are increasing, both in frequency and intensity, quite rapidly.”
The fires currently raging in greater Los Angeles are already among the most destructive in US history. By Friday, the blazes had consumed more than 36,000 acres and destroyed thousands of buildings. As of midday Friday, at least 10 people were dead, and losses could top $100 billion, according to AccuWeather.
Although it is not possible to say with certainty as any specific weather event unfolds whether it was worsened or made more likely by global warming, the Los Angeles fires are being driven by a number of factors that scientists have linked to fire weather and that are becoming increasingly common on a hotter planet.
Last winter, Southern California got huge amounts of rain that led to extensive vegetation growth. Now, months into what is typically the rainy season, Los Angeles is experiencing a drought. The last time it rained more than a tenth of an inch was on May 5. Since then, it has been the second-driest period in the city’s recorded history.
Temperatures in the region have also been higher than normal. As a result, many of the plants that grew last year are parched, turning trees, grasses and bushes into kindling that was ready to explode.
That combination of heat and dryness, which scientists say is linked to climate change, created the ideal conditions for an urban firestorm.
“Wintertime fires in Southern California require a lot of extreme climate and weather events to occur at once,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at UCLA. “And the warmer the temperatures, the more intense the fires.”
A third factor fuelling the fires, the fierce Santa Ana winds, which blow West from Utah and Nevada, cannot be directly linked to climate change, scientists say. But the winds this week have been particularly ferocious, gusting at more than 100 mph, as fierce as a Category 2 hurricane.
Fires across the West have been getting worse in recent years. In 2017, thousands of homes in Santa Rosa, California, burned to the ground. The next year, the Camp fire levelled more than 13,000 homes in Paradise, California. In 2021, roughly 1,000 homes burned near Boulder, Colorado.
And from the boreal forests of Canada to the redwood groves of Oregon, large fires have been incinerating vast areas of wilderness. — The New York Times
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