Swamp Stomp
Volume 18, Issue 2
Over 230,000 square acres and upwards of 1,000 structures in urban southern California have been burned in what is now recognized as one of the worst wildfires in California state history. At least 200,000 residents from the towns of Ventura, Ojai, and Montecito, all to the northwest of Los Angeles, have been evacuated as the flames continue to be driven west by the desiccating Santa Ana winds, annual gusts that blow from the southwest deserts over the Santa Ana mountain range and into coastal California in the winter. “It’s not like someone-pointing-a-gun-at-you scared,” said Montecito resident Charles McCaleb referencing the approaching wildfire. “Its more of a controlled fright where you know what’s happening.”
Numerous factors are contributing to these intense wildfires, not least of which includes the fact that this summer and fall have been both the hottest and driest on record for California. “The [relative] humidities right now along the coast are much drier than what you’d normally see in the interior desert in the summertime,” said Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist. “Once you get down to 1% or 2%, you’re down almost as low as is physically possible.” After a historically wet winter last year that allowed more grass and underbrush to grow throughout the state than normal, the extreme heat and dryness of summer and fall killed off the majority of this vegetation, building up an excess of natural dry tinder that the current wildfire has been able to continuously feed off of. Even though California’s wet season was supposed to begin in October, precipitation has been below the historical average, further exacerbating the wildfires. “Normally if we had a little bit of rain, there’s some moisture in the soil to recover,” Swain said. “But there is no rain in sight, about as far as I can possibly say about the weather.”
While it is too early to determine, human-induced climate change is thought to be a culprit in contributing to California’s extreme weather conditions, with studies showing that climate change contributed strongly to the state’s drought in 2012. In accordance with climate change models, annual variations of precipitation and temperature, like the kind California has seen in the past decade, are expected to increase, exaggerating the differences between wet and dry years and increasing the risk of wildfires.“ This is looking like the type of year that might occur more often in the future,” said A. Parker Williams, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, who led one of the studies investigating climate change’s impact on California’s drought.
Some meteorologists argue that climate change may not be to blame, citing a ridge of air over the Pacific Northwest influenced by the naturally occurring La Niña cycle as the reason for southern California’s abnormal weather. Yet according to Dr. Williams, due to the warming effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, “whatever happens, it’s all superimposed on a warmer world.”
Sources:
- Fountain, Henry. “In a Warming California, a Future of More Fire.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 7 December 2017. Web. 10 December 2017.
- Lai, K.K Rebecca, Derek Watkins and Tim Wallace. “Where the Fires are Spreading in Southern California,” The New York Times. The New York Times, 8 December 2017. Web. 10 December 2017.
- Serna, Joseph. “For some, Thomas fire triggers ‘controlled fright.'” The Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times, 11 December 2017. Web. 11 December 2017.
- Serna, Joseph. “Why is Southern California burning in December? A climate scientist’s answer.” The Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times, 7 December 2017. Web. 11 December 2017.