(part of the text below includes my latest newsletter regarding the recent Los Angeles wildfires – with edits. This blog expands on it.)
Like many folks, I’ve been tracking what I can handle about the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. I’m sure you’ll agree that the story is overwhelming with tragedy wherever you are from. What’s been repeatedly said in the media is that these LA fire events are related to climate change. So, are these fires a result of climate change? I’ve found that the answer is yes but in part. And I’ve discovered credible scientists who say they’re not.
UCLA has produced a position paper (not peer-reviewed yet) highlighting the case for climate change’s influence on the order of one-quarter of the cause of these intense fires. Presenting historical data dating back to the late 19th century, they point out that having so much fuel (vegetation and wood structures) and dryness over the current winter has been unusual. Only 1962-63 during that period matches the absence of rain (dryness) so late into the winter. (The UCLA study was also reviewed in Scientific American). Southern California’s fuel load is above average due to the two earlier wet years. The hot summer, experienced in SoCA and globally, is the climate change signal that sets the stage for extreme dryness and an extreme fire event.
Several questions follow: Why has it been so dry, and why is it so windy? We’ve experienced Santa Ana winds for years, but why are they so fierce? Why is there no rain? The clue to this for me was weather reports that showed a large high-pressure area offshore the west coast. This blocking high sets up a curve (sometimes a loop) in the jet stream, shooting storms north and around California and then southward into the Southeast U.S. My brother’s home in Atlanta has snow in the yard.
That high-pressure area moves back and forth east to the coast and back west. But winds circulate clockwise around a high (in the northern hemisphere). So, when the high is near or over the west coast, the winds come from the north or east. This is the Santa Ana setup.
But is that unusual? It’s a pattern typical of La Niña, which NOAA now thinks is in place. In a neutral year between La Niña and El Niño, the high is farther south, and the jet stream has less curvature, allowing low pressure to move over the western US and bring rain. Does climate change (global warming and heating) affect La Niña – El Niño? That, I believe, is not settled. Some scientists say that pattern is part of a warming world. Others will have to weigh in on it.
Substack’s blog, The Free Press, published an interview with physicist Steve Koonin, an expert in renewable energy and, arguably, a climate change skeptic. It asks the question: did climate change cause the LA fires? Koonin is dismissive of that. He argues that many other factors are responsible for those fires, giving a list similar to the UCLA study. He states that other late winters, or very dry conditions, have been typical in the recent past. That conflicts with UCLA data, which shows that this winter has been unique.
The interview goes astray when it delves into factors such as a climate database that, globally, is too short to reveal long-term trends. The IPCC may have implied that in its reports, but the record for ice cores, which goes back hundreds of thousands of years, says differently. We live in a unique age where human activities have increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
To continue my diversion from the topic, Koonin argues that renewable energy is not the answer to decarbonization. Instead, he favors nuclear energy. I won’t go further with my analysis, but I will direct you to the Free Press interview. Readers might also be interested in Koonin’s book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters.
I will leave readers with a question that has a profound answer. What does ” fossil ” mean in the term “fossil fuel?”
I’m just a simple man, worried for you and my sister, and of course for my children, who all live with what now seems the constant threat of wildfires. Because I’m simple, I hope to leave it to you scientists to figure our way out of this. I only wish there was a United States administration that would let you do that, and not yank you folks back and forth every time the political winds change, at the cost to you of the real winds.