Leading climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katharine Hayhoe says the wildfires causing devastation in California are a stark reminder of the reality of climate change today.
Hayhoe, currently Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit international charitable organisation, says Los Angeles County was ‘tinder dry’ after receiving only 0.16 inches of rain since last May and experiencing ‘an unusually warm summer’.
This, she says, ‘plus low humidity and the fastest Santa Ana winds since 2011, made for unprecedented fire weather.’
Writing in her email newsletter, Hayhoe says: ‘We know that climate change is creating warmer, drier conditions that cause fire seasons in some regions like western North America to last longer and be more active. Fires across western North America are growing bigger. These fires are also getting faster, and faster fires are much more dangerous and destructive.
‘Seventeen of the 20 largest wildfires in California history have occurred since 2003 … And the drought Los Angeles was experiencing this [Autumn] and winter was influenced by record-high ocean temperatures.’
Hayhoe adds: ‘Scientists can even put numbers on how much climate change is influencing wildfires. A full 37% of the area burned across western North America over the last 35 years is attributable to emissions from 88 corporations.
‘Another study found that climate change has increased the risk of extreme daily wildfire growth by 25%, on average. Very fast fires are responsible for more than 75% of the structures that burned in the United States from 2001 to 2020.
‘Yet again, climate change is no longer a future issue – it’s here and now, putting us all at risk.’
