As the weather warms up in Southern California, the risk of wildfires increases, and this summer might be busy for firefighters.
Officials are warning the public that this fire season “is off to a much faster start than last year,” the Washington Post notes, though “the forecast is complicated, however, by a mix of competing factors both increasing and decreasing the fire risk.”
“Back in early May, forecasters were anticipating a lower fire risk toward the early part of the summer after California received plenty of rain and snow during the winter and spring, although predictions of a hot summer and a delayed or weak southwest monsoon were already raising concerns for later in the season,” Dan Stillman and Diana Leonard explained for the Post.
A recent study, however, says wildfires are trending toward becoming more common and larger in California.
The report by Climate Central found that the number of fire weather days — days in which temperatures, humidity levels and winds create conditions in which a wildfire can thrive — is increasing on average in California, especially in the interior of the state.
“We’re really talking about days when the stage is set for prime wildfire growth,” Kaitlyn Trudeau, senior research associate with Climate Central, told the Los Angeles Times. “All three conditions are working together to make for really dangerous meteorological conditions.”
This is due, at least in part, to climate change, Trudeau told the Times’ Alex Wigglesworth. As temperatures rise, warmer air can hold more water, so the atmosphere “has become thirstier, pulling more moisture from plants and soils and making them burn more readily,” Wigglesworth wrote.
“Because we can attribute that warming to climate change, and because of the relationship between relative humidity and temperature, we know that we can attribute some of this to climate change,” Trudeau said.
That said, many other variables come into play, ranging from fire suppression and changes in local vegetation to logging and construction.
“Our analysis should definitely not be taken as a comprehensive be-all, end-all of what fire risk is in California, or fire weather risk, because there are so many other variables,” Trudeau told the Times. “But it gives you a piece of the puzzle.”
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