Is climate change to blame for the California wildfires?

The “Pyrocene” is upon us. At least, that is the theory which was first introduced by fire historian Stephen Pyne in a 2015 essay.

United States Forest Service ecologist Gavin Jones described the Pyrocene in a 2023 interview with The Explorers Journal as the current era in which humans experience greater fire activity than before. The key driver – human activity.

The wildfires currently ripping through suburbs of Los Angeles in California and beyond have claimed at least 11 lives so far as well as more than 30,000 acres of land and more than 10,000 buildings. They are the most destructive wildfires in the history of the state.

As wildfires become more frequent each year around the world, concern from climate scientists that climate change is making them worse is mounting.

Intense and seemingly unstoppable wildfires in several Los Angeles neighbourhoods in California, US, which began on Tuesday, have killed at least 10 people and destroyed 10,000 houses and structures. About 30,000 acres (12,000 hectares) of land have been burned, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

All hands are on deck to fight the #PalisadesFire in Southern California. California is deeply grateful for the brave firefighters & first responders battling the blaze.

We will continue to mobilize resources and support local communities as they respond to this severe weather. pic.twitter.com/JZrYy85e4z

— Governor Newsom (@CAgovernor) January 8, 2025

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom said in a video he posted on X on Wednesday that there is no longer a fire “season” in California. “It’s year-round in the state of California.”

Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences, agrees. He told Al Jazeera that we now “have to live with a fire age, the fire-informed equivalent to an ice age”.

Has climate change contributed to the California wildfires?

It is very likely, according to many experts.

The planet is warming to record-breaking levels, scientists warn. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed on Friday that 2024 was the first full year where global temperatures exceeded pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius.

C3S said the climate crisis is pushing the world to temperatures never before experienced by modern humans.

Climate change has contributed to an increase in the frequency, season length and burned area of wildfires, according to a report by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

As a result of all this, says Pyne, global warming is “adding energy to the system, magnifying the wet and dry spells, lengthening the fire season, ramping up all the [already powerful] elements that contribute to California’s firescape”.

How does climate change trigger wildfires specifically?

The exact causes of the California fires, which began on Tuesday in the Palisades area of Los Angeles, are unknown and under investigation.

“But they are human,” Pyne says. “They might be directly related to people [malice, carelessness] or indirectly [say, through faulty power lines]. For the moment the origins are unclear.”

Experts say, however, that it is likely that a combination of environmental factors created the optimal conditions for the calendar-defiant fires to spread as rapidly as they have.

For one thing, southern California has not seen significant rainfall for months.

The US Drought Monitor’s latest map shows that as of January 7, only 39.1 percent of California is completely drought-free. The rest of the state is described as “abnormally dry” and some areas are experiencing “moderate to exceptional” droughts.

At about this time last year – as of January 2, 2024 – 96.7 percent of California was classed as drought-free. Furthermore, only 3.4 percent of the state was abnormally dry and no parts were experiencing drought of any severity.

The extremely dry conditions cause the vegetation to become extremely parched and therefore highly flammable.

Besides this, Los Angeles has an abundance of other flammable materials in its infrastructure, such as low-hanging power cables and wooden telephone poles.

Hot Santa Ana winds have also gusted in from the interior of the region towards the coast and offshore, further dehydrating the vegetation, say experts. When vegetation is so dry and conditions are so flammable, any spark can start a fire, be it a burning cigarette butt, vehicle or power line.

Are other natural disasters linked to climate change?

Yes. The changing climate coupled with poor urban planning and management has exacerbated natural disasters globally, including cyclones,?hurricanes?and floods.

Scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) believe that if planet temperatures exceed the pre-industrial average by 2C, hurricane wind speeds could rise by 10 percent.

They also say that climate change might be slowing the pace – rather than the velocity – at which hurricanes move. This means that storms can dump more water on the places they pass through.

Warm oceans help cyclones intensify rapidly, Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, told Al Jazeera in April 2023.

In October last year, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) said that climate change caused by fossil fuel use had increased seasonal rainfall across the Niger and Lake Chad basins by between 5 percent and 20 percent in 2024, causing more flooding.

Asian countries have also experienced intense floods in recent years. In April 2024, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a report that found Asia has been warming faster than the global average.

WMO chief Celeste Saulo said in a statement that “many countries in the region experienced their hottest year on record in 2023, along with a barrage of extreme conditions, from droughts and heatwaves to floods and storm”. She added that the “frequency and severity of such events” was exacerbated by climate change.

Will these events become worse if climate change is not tackled?

Wildfires are expected to worsen with time as a result of climate change and changing land use, according to a 2022 report by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and its partner, environmental communications centre, GRID-Arendal.

The report projected that extreme fires worldwide will increase by as much as 14 percent by 2030, 30 percent by the end of 2050 and 50 percent by the end of the century.

Furthermore, wildfires damage the environment in other ways, too. In terms of the California fires, “when (and if) winter rains finally arrive, they could lead to hillside erosion and debris flows”, Pyne said, suggesting that cleanup after the fire “will be messy, long and expensive”.

Conditions created by humans have also made it difficult to cope with the fallout of environmental disasters.

Pyne said “contemporary houses are filled with plastics, synthetics and electronics that can be toxic” when they go up in flames.

How do wildfires affect wildlife?

Wildfires burn away acres of land rapidly and can have different effects on wildlife inhabiting fire sites.

The effects depend on the type of wildlife and its habitat requirements, and the intensity and frequency of the wildfires, according to an article published by North Carolina (NC) State University.

Some species can quickly escape as a fire quickly engulfs acres of land. “Some animals, especially those that are immobile or too slow to escape, are more vulnerable to the smoke and heat of wildfires,” it explains.

Does that affect the environment generally?

It could. As wildfires change vegetation by thinning it, some wildlife can lose their habitat, and the resulting movement of wildlife can throw off the balance of a local ecosystem in a region.

Take snakes as an example. Some 33 snake species are endemic to California.

Michael Starkey, a conservation biologist whose work focuses on snake conservation told Al Jazeera that rising temperatures and dry conditions are making some regions uninhabitable for some snake species.

Starkey said that while some snakes can move away, other species could go extinct. This is a problem because snakes eat rodents which destroy crops for human consumption. This chain reaction can affect entire food systems.

California is also home to 700 vertebrate species, which simply put, are animals with backbones and skeletons. This makes the state the US’s most biodiverse, according to an article published by the US Department of Agriculture in March 2024.

Record-breaking wildfires engulfed California in 2020 and 2021, burning more than 4.2 million acres of land.

“Tragically, the bushfires killed or displaced almost 3 billion animals. It made me wonder what was happening to our wildlife,” the US Forest Service ecologist Jones was quoted as saying in the US Agriculture Department article.

Pacific Southwest Research Station Ecologist John Keane said that spotted owls are a particular species of concern, according to the article. “Wildfire disasters can destroy old-growth trees and dense forest patches upon which spotted owls depend for nesting, roosting, and foraging.”