Fire In Paradise
Expect what we are seeing in California to happen more frequently and get even worse
California is no stranger to wildfires, yet for years, scientists and firefighters have feared a worst-case scenario where wildfires across the region become out-of-control, and the only thing emergency services can do is try to limit the damage as thousands have to evacuate from their homes before it ruthlessly burns communities down.
That moment seems to be right now.
At the time of writing, at least six different fires are devastating the Sunshine State at the moment. Officials say the two largest wildfires have burned down more than 10,000 structures, many of them residential homes.
More than 180,000 people were under evacuation orders by Thursday, and another 200,000 residents are under evacuation warnings. At least 10 people were killed by the fires, and the number is unfortunately going to rise in the following days.
Numerous celebrities were affected. Some had to experience their houses being destroyed by the fire, others faced evacuation orders, while Steve Guttenberg volunteered to help first responders and accidentally starred in a viral interview with local media.
The human cost and the visible impact of the wildfires are tragic and horrifying, but I want to spare a moment to contemplate what caused it and what it hints at to our future.
In California, two conditions make it ripe for wildfires to grow. First of all, the state is susceptible to drought-like conditions. Southern California has had less than 10% of average rainfall since October, and it has been months since significant rain has affected the region. Secondly, powerful offshore winds have made a sizable impact on the spread of wildfires. The Santa Ana winds form annually as cold air travels from the Great Basin to Southern California, but this year’s winds have been unusually strong, sometimes approaching hurricane strength.
Thanks to these two factors, the fires have been more widespread and resilient than previously thought. Scientists have blamed climate “whiplash,” or a swing between drought and heavy rainfall, as a more persistent cause of the increasing intensity of wildfires, as the BBC explained.
Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.
Rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite.
Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024.
Scientists say in a new study that climate change has boosted what they call these "whiplash" conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.
Moreover, human factors have actively worsened the already terrible situation. Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College, told NBC News the wildfires we are seeing are “Entirely foreseeable,” adding “We have been building homes deep into the fire zones. We know they’re fire zones, we know they’re dangerous, and yet City Hall and county government have constantly greenlit development in places of greater and greater risks. All of the factors you don’t want to see combined combined.
After the Woolsey Fire in November 2018, the authorities released an after-action review that described a “perfect storm” wildfire that overwhelmed firefighters and resources at the scene. “The public has a perception that public agencies can always protect them. As an incident, the size of the Woolsey Fire shows, this is not always possible.” Back in 2018, there were only three deaths that were caused by the fire. Now, we are seeing this all happen again with a vengeance.
With wildfires raging on in California with no sign of slowing down, it puts the recent environmental news into deep perspective. Nobody was surprised on Friday as the EU’s Copernicus Climate Service and the UK Met Office officially announced that 2024 is the hottest year on record, it was how hot the Earth was that caused real alarm.
For context, 2024’s record breaks the previous hottest year on record, which is 2023’s temperature by 0.1 degrees Celcius, marking the last 10 years all being the top 10 warmest years on record.
The planet warmed by 1.6 degrees Celcius, exceeding the 1.5C limit set by scientists and policymakers as the threshold for limiting global warming in the Paris Agreement. Since its inception in 2015, countries have repeatedly not followed their promises made for the past ten years, now we are witnessing what that inaction is leading to.
There is a political cost as we break through 1.5C so easily. Just last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the temperature records as a "climate breakdown,” saying in his New Year’s Eve address that “We must exit this road to ruin - and we have no time to lose.”
The big question puzzling scientists is the speed of the recent jump in global temperature. Many scientists are mentally prepared for the global temperature to rise above 1.5 degrees Celcius, but the time it took us to arrive at this point has dumbfounded climate scientists. What is behind the faster-than-expected increase (Some have suggested an apparent reduction in the low-level cloud cover that tends to cool the planet, and prolonged ocean heat following the end of El Niño as potential factors) has led to academic debate, asking whether the recent developments are a spiky blip in the record or the start of a more lasting acceleration caused by human activity.
Arguably, the 2020s is a crucial decade for us to curtail the worst impacts of climate change from happening. Despite lofty idealistic views on how the pandemic will be a game-changer for environmentalism and climate policy, recent COP summits have proven to be underwhelming in delivering international agreement, not to mention the last two gatherings in Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates are almost laughably ironic. Also, given the newly elected Donald Trump has pulled out of the Paris Agreement once, and is not shy from doing it again when he comes back to office, don’t expect much to be done on the leadership level.
Experts say the current trajectory for long-term global warming would likely pass the 1.5C mark by the early 2030s, arguing that instead of believing 1.9C is paradise and 1.51 is hell, scientists say we should expect every tenth of a degree will lead to progressively worse climate impacts. Activists have changed tactics by fighting for climate action at the local level, but the movement’s influence can go so far, and that’s not accounting for how other political positions might affect the persuasiveness of advocacy.
In the meantime, adapting might be a good strategy to deal with extreme weather events, not just wildfires. Hurricanes, rainstorms, drought, and floods are all expected to worsen under a warmer planet. Sea level rise will badly affect coastal cities in the decades ahead, flooding many major cities around the world. Also, don’t forget the emergence of climate refugees who are forced to leave their countries because of the negative environmental impacts. If you think the current debate over refugees is abhorrent, wait until the next few years.
California’s wildfires are a signal to the increasingly closer future, and this time, we are likely seeing the tamer side of the upcoming tragedies.