California Fires: How human-caused climate change fueled Los Angeles wildfires – all we need to know

Los Angeles Wildfires: Climate change has been increasingly delaying the onset of autumn and winter rains in parts of California, and in Los Angeles the period since July 2024 has had the second-lowest rainfall in 150 years, reports said. Planet-heating gases from burning oil, coal and gas are making wildfires in California more frequent and dangerous, they said.

Combined with rising temperatures, this is drying out vegetation, making the area more vulnerable to burning, the reports said. Strong winds that have driven the fires are normal for this time of year, but the recent fires in Los Angeles are more dangerous because conditions are often drier as a result of climate change.

Experts said the current conditions serve as evidence of multiple factors fueling these extreme events and one of them is warming temperatures.

"What we have clear evidence of is that climate change is contributing to the warming, not only globally, but in California in the Southern California region. We know that is elevating the risk that wind and other weather conditions come together, and the odds of severe wildfire conditions are elevated," Dr Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford climate scientist, was quoted as saying to ABC news.

‘Hotter and Drier’

Wildfires in Los Angeles have killed at least 10 people and devoured nearly 10,000 structures, with five fires burning into a third night on Thursday as dry desert winds fanning the flames again gathered strength.

Human-caused climate change has made California hotter and drier, making it easier for fires to start and spread. This is causing a larger area to be burned every year, the reports said. The area burned by wildfires in California annually is now five times bigger than in the 1970s, according to American Geophysical Union (AGU), a nonprofit organisation of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists. Nearly all of this increase is due to climate change, says a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Climate change is also making it easier for fires in California to spread quickly; about 25 per cent more fires now spread extremely fast, the reports said.

The January 2025 fires are being driven by strong winds. While the winds are not unusual at this time of year, the delayed onset of the rains means that it is unusually dry. Climate change is thus increasing the probability of the strong winds and dry conditions overlapping, which together can intensify fires, the reports said.

California had its hottest June and July and the second hottest October, with many of the hot days scientifically linked to climate change. 2024 was the hottest year on record globally, due to climate change. This heat and lack of rainfall left the vegetation tinder dry when the Santa Ana winds started.