How climate crisis fanned LA fire and why the world is its tinderbox
The climate crisis is manifesting itself in a more varied and complicated manner, including and not limited to, prolonged periods of heatwaves
On the morning of the seventh, an eerie orange hue hung over the LA skyline separate from the break of dawn. As people woke up in home after home, dramatic photos of the Palisades fire started flooding social media. Soon, a sense of dread spread among the residents of the posh neighbourhood as calls for evacuation rang out. The fires, as of January 16, have destroyed 12,000 structures, and caused least 26 deaths.

As the fires spread, many Hollywood landmarks came in harm’s way, including the Hollywood Sign, Universal Studios, the Getty Villa. While the government has not provided damage estimates yet, AccuWeather, a company that provides data on weather and its impact, has pegged the damage and economic losses at $250bn to $275bn.
For anyone keeping records, COP29 in November 2024 saw developed countries pledge to “take the lead” in raising $300 billion annually for developing countries by 2035. This goal was the whole planet, and the entirety of humanity.
While the jury is out on what led to the fires, a basic lesson into the mechanics of any fire shows that it needs three things: ignition, a probe has already begun; fodder for the fire, LA had a good year vegetation-wise that dried out due to the drought over the last few months; and oxygen from the air, the Santa Ana winds have been relentless.
Heavy rainfall linked to El Nino in Los Angeles in late 2023 and early 2024 — Southern California was under water as torrential rain from atmospheric rivers led to a deadly winter of storms and mudslides — led to abundant vegetation in the city. A station near the Palisades Fire recorded 19.3 inches of rain in February, well above the 4.7-inch norm, spurring plant growth.
In the months that followed, however, the weather pendulum swung the other way as the region suffered its second-driest period in 150 years with almost no rainfall since July 2024. The lack of rainfall and pursuant heat sapped all moisture out of the vegetation leaving it tinder dry before the Santa Ana winds started.
“There have been few if any years since 1895… that have been so much above-normal in the northern part of the state while simultaneously so dry in the south,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, wrote in his blog Weather West.
This swing from dry to wet to dry conditions is known as a hydroclimate whiplash, which is becoming more frequent as the planet warms due to fossil fuel pollution, according to a study — Hydroclimate volatility on a warming Earth — published in the journal Nature on January 9. The swings, the study said, worsen the severity and chances of hazards like wildfires and flash floods.
“Hydroclimatic variability manifests as fluctuations between unusually dry or wet meteorological conditions on timescales of days to decades. One component of this variability is hydroclimate volatility — a collective term describing anomalously frequent, sudden and/or high-magnitude transitions from wet-to-dry conditions or dry-to-wet conditions relative to a local baseline,” the study said. The study warned of a rise in magnitude of this hydroclimatic volatility “by ~130% and ~50% over land areas, respectively, for subseasonal and interannual whiplash at 3°C warming above pre-industrial temperature”.
“The largest increases are projected to occur across the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes, the Pacific and Atlantic tropical oceans, and in a broad swath extending eastward from northern Africa, across the Arabian Peninsula and into portions of South Asia,” the study said.
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Another contributing factor in LA, were the windstorms — the hot dry winds coming in from the Californian desert that whipped moisture out of the vegetation. These windstorms, or the Santa Ana winds which are part of the LA weather pattern, are often also the cause of the fire as they disrupt power lines setting fire to property in their wake.
Winds gusting to 100mph whipped flames home to home creating an inferno impossible for firefighters to douse in an anyway water-less city; there were reports of water from swimming pools being used in the rescue ops. The question, however, remains: did climate change cause the LA fires? Probably not. It was likely an ember that hit the dried-out vegetation, set it ablaze, and the Santa Ana winds fanned the fire. Or, as is the case many times, an arsonist may be to blame.
Climate change did, however, make the situation worse.
To understand the impact of climate change — change is now an understatement and should be replaced with crisis as in the HT newsroom — one must first understand that it is not as simple as a warming planet, melting snow, rising sea levels, and trees being cut. The climate crisis is now manifesting itself in a more varied and complicated manner, including and not limited to, prolonged periods of heatwaves with even night-time temperatures going up to 49°C in north-Indian cities, a year’s worth of rain falling on a single city in Spain in a matter of hours, the disappearance of the spring season, and arctic regions seeing green on land for the first time ever.
Studies have found that the fire season in LA, usually an annual affair, has become more prolonged and covers a much larger area. This past week alone, the fires have gutted an area of 40,000 acres and more windstorms are in the offing.
California has a fire season that historically culminates in October before the winter rains arrived. Various studies and experts have, however, pointed out that it is not a season anymore with fires raging all year round.
“This time of year, traditionally has not been fire season, but now we disabuse any notion that there is a season,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said soon after the first fires started. “It’s year-round in the state of California.”
A study by Climate Central in 2023 concluded that “wildfire seasons are lengthening and intensifying, particularly during spring and summer in the West. Parts of Southern California and the Southwest are seeing around two additional months of fire weather compared to the early 1970s”. While the study acknowledged that nearly 90% of the wildfires between 2018 and 2022 in the United States were caused by humans, it highlighted that “human activity influences the weather and environmental conditions that increase the likelihood that wildfires will start and spread”. “At least two-thirds of the rapid increase in fire weather in the western US in recent decades can be attributed to human-caused climate change,” it said.
Separately, the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report noted a “lengthening wildfire season and increases in the area burned”, which it further attributed to climate change. “Roughly half of the world’s population currently experiences severe water shortages at some point during the year, in part due to climate change and extreme events such as flooding and droughts,” the IPCC report from 2023 said. While the community response to the fires has been immediate and inclusive, might it be better if these communities came together to build more sustainable futures?
“A combination of things needs to be looked at, not only in terms of the longer-term development of the area, but also in terms of reducing the risk and the impact of these kinds of disasters. More robust policies are going to be needed that value investment in water infrastructure with greater consideration towards things like wildfires and underlying vulnerability,” Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and an associate professor of professional practice in climate at the Columbia Climate School, told the university’s blog post.
As Hollywood — many actors, directors, and filmmakers have lost homes and precious memories in this year’s fires — comes together to provide aid and shelter to the victims, and rebuild, a call to their government for a ban on fossil fuels would perhaps lead better results.
Hopes of action from the incoming Donald Trump administration are less than few; the Biden administration, even with the IRA, was not devoid of criticism. For any government to accept the role of climate crisis, would amount to an admission of their guilt and their role in making this planet a tinder box. In the meantime, all anyone can do is watch the climate crisis manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phone footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.
