The California fires are not climate
By
Chris Martz
|
January 9th, 2025
To Senator Sanders:
Hi there Colonel Sanders.
Do you like facts?
I hope you do, because you’re about to be sacked with some.
Here we go. . . First, climate change does not cause forest fires. That isn’t how this works. Fires require an ignition source and fuel.
Ignition sources may be natural (e.g., lightning) or it can be man-made (e.g., by accident from improperly disposed cigarette butts, improperly discarded pellet / wood stove ash, an out-of-control campfire or fallen power lines, or perhaps even intentionally by arson). But, climate change is not one of them.
The origin of the Pacific Palisades fire hasn’t been determined. But, what is known is that it is being fueled by dried out vegetation and is being stoked by Santa Ana Winds (SAWs) with hurricane-force wind gusts. These winds are a byproduct of a tight horizontal pressure gradient between a tropospheric ridge situated over the Great Basin and a cut-off low spinning over Baja California. Southwesterly downslope flow accelerated by a tight gradient can easily dry out vegetation, especially small-diameter fuels like twigs and leaves, priming a forest for a fire should one be ignited.
While the warming atmosphere — and, for sake of argument, we will assume that it is entirely due to mankind’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — might make weather conditions more conducive for forest fires in Southern California, there is yet to be an established “consensus” on exactly how fires will change in the region with increased global warming. The reason for this is because air temperature during the event and precipitation deficits over the preceding weeks and/or months aren’t the only — or necessarily even the most important — factors in fire burn area (e.g., Keeley et al., 2021).
https://www.cfact.org/2025/01/09/the-california-fires-are-not-climate/
