Fires Rage in Southern California - Is Global Warming the Cause?

Fires rage in California - is global warming part of the reason? Now hold on there. We all know that one single environmental event – be it flood, killer hurricane, relentless drought, or raging fire – can’t be attributed to global warming with 100% certainty.

Climate is not weather, and to that point much of the current spate of wildfires consuming vast tracts of land in Southern California is caused by the infamous “Santa Ana winds”.

We can’t blame the Santa Ana winds on global warming.

With that said, there is more going on here than just the seasonal winds blowing through the south. A report just this last Sunday on 60 Minutes shows that within the past ten years fire seasons are longer, with more fires, and those fires are increasingly turning into record-breaking mega-fires – some in excess of 600,000 acres – that scorch an already parched and drought-stricken land.

I recently wrote here in Hugg that there are concerns among scientists that the un-expectantly rapid melting of the arctic ice cap may be changing global weather patterns and feeding the ongoing drought we’re experiencing here in California and the American Southwest.

This morning on national television, California governor Arnold Swarchenegger attributed some of the problem firefighters were having in battling the dozens of wildfires throughout southern California to global warming.

So even if we can’t, or even shouldn’t, say with any certainty that “global warming is causing all the fires”, nor should we bury our head in the sand and not try to see what is before us.

And with all that off my chest, I wish all the firefighters and the hundreds of thousands of evacuated citizens of southern California a speedy return to some semblance of normalcy.

Of course, with global warming and climate change, “normalcy” may not be in cards for any of us.

Sources and Further Reading
Bloomberg
BBC

Photo courtesy of the US Bureau of Land Management