“Pirocen” is in front of us. At least that’s the theory first presented by fire historian Stephen Pyne in a 2015 essay.
United States Forest Service ecologist Gavin Jones described the Pyrocene in an interview with The Explorers Journal in 2023 as a current era in which people are experiencing more fire activity than before. The key driver is human activity.
The forest fires currently raging through the suburbs of Los Angeles, California and beyond, have so far claimed at least 11 lives, as well as more than 30,000 acres of land and more than 10,000 buildings. These are the most destructive forest fires in the state’s history.
As wildfires become more common around the world each year, climate scientists are increasingly concerned that climate change is making them worse.
Intense and seemingly unstoppable wildfires in several neighborhoods of Los Angeles, California, USA, which began on Tuesday, have killed at least 10 people and destroyed 10,000 homes and structures. About 30,000 hectares (12,000 acres) of land have burned, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
Everyone is ready to fight against #PalisadesFire in southern California. California is deeply grateful to the brave firefighters and first responders fighting 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 Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a video he posted on X Wednesday that California is no longer in “fire season.” “It’s year-round in the state of California.”
Pyne, professor emeritus at Arizona State University’s College of Life Sciences, agrees. He told Al Jazeera that now “we have to live with an age of fire, the equivalent of an ice age of fires”.
Has climate change contributed to California wildfires?
It is very likely, according to many experts.
The planet is warming to record levels, scientists warn. The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed on Friday that 2024 was the first full year in which 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, length of the season and burned area of forest fires, according to a report by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
As a result of all this, says Pyne, global warming “adds energy to the system, increases wet and dry periods, lengthens the fire season, intensifies everything [already powerful] elements that contribute to the California wildfire”.
How does climate change specifically cause forest fires?
The exact causes of the fires in California, which broke out on Tuesday in the Palisades area of Los Angeles, are unknown and under investigation.
“But they’re human,” says Pyne. “I can relate directly to people [malice, carelessness] or indirectly [say, through faulty power lines]. For now, the origin is unclear.”
Experts, however, say it’s likely a combination of environmental factors created optimal conditions for the calendar-defying fires spread as fast as they do.
For one thing, Southern California hasn’t had any significant precipitation in months.
The The latest map from the US Drought Monitor shows that as of Jan. 7, only 39.1 percent of California is completely drought-free. The rest of the state is described as “abnormally dry” with some areas experiencing “moderate to exceptional” drought.
Around this time last year – as of January 2, 2024 – 96.7 percent of California was classified as drought-free. Furthermore, only 3.4 percent of the state was abnormally dry and no part experienced a drought of any severity.
Extremely dry conditions cause vegetation to become extremely parched and therefore highly flammable.
In addition, Los Angeles has an abundance of other flammable materials in its infrastructure, such as low-hanging power lines and wooden telephone poles.
Hot Santa Ana winds also blew in from the region’s interior toward the coast and offshore, further dehydrating the vegetation, experts said. When vegetation is so dry and conditions so flammable, any spark can start a fire, whether it’s a burning cigarette, a vehicle or a power line.
Are other natural disasters linked to climate change?
That. Climate change combined with poor urban planning and management has exacerbated global natural disasters, including cyclones, hurricanes and floods.
Scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) believe that if the planet’s temperatures exceed the pre-industrial average by 2C, hurricane wind speeds could increase by 10 percent.
They also say climate change could be slowing the pace — not the speed — at which hurricanes move. This means that storms can dump more water on the places they pass through.
Warm oceans help cyclones rapidly intensify, Roxy Mathew Koll, a climatologist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, he told Al Jazeera in April 2023.
Last October, the World Weather Attribution (WWA) he said that climate change caused by fossil fuel use has increased seasonal rainfall in 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) released a report stating that Asia is 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 range of extreme conditions, from droughts and heat waves to floods and storms.” She added that “the frequency and severity of such events” have been exacerbated by climate change.
Will these events get worse if we don’t address climate change?
Forest fires are expected to worsen over time as a result of climate change and land-use change, according to a 2022 report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and its partner, the Environment Communication Center, GRID-Arendal.
The report predicts 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, forest fires damage the environment in other ways. As for the California wildfires, “when (and if) the winter rains finally arrive, they could lead to hillside erosion and debris flows,” Pyne said, suggesting that post-fire cleanup “will be messy, time-consuming and expensive.”
Human-made conditions have also made it more difficult to deal with the consequences of environmental disasters.
Pyne said “modern homes are full of plastics, synthetics and electronics that can be toxic” when they catch fire.
How do forest fires affect wildlife?
Wildfires quickly burn acres of land and can have a variety of effects on the wildlife that inhabits the wildfires.
The effects depend on the species of wildlife and their habitat requirements, and the intensity and frequency of wildfires, according to an article published by North Carolina (NC) State University.
Some species can escape quickly as the fire quickly consumes acres of land. “Some animals, especially those that are immobile or too slow to escape, are more sensitive to the smoke and heat of forest fires,” it explains.
Does it affect the environment in general?
It could. As wildfires alter the vegetation by thinning it, some wildlife may lose their habitat, and the resulting movement of wildlife may disrupt the balance of the local ecosystem in the region.
Let’s take snakes as an example. About 33 species of snakes are endemic to California.
Michael Starkey, a conservation biologist whose work focuses on snake conservation he told Al Jazeera that rising temperatures and dry conditions are making some regions uninhabitable for some snake species.
Starkey said while some snakes may move away, other species could become extinct. This is a problem because snakes eat rodents that destroy crops for human consumption. This chain reaction can affect entire food systems.
California is also home to 700 species of vertebrates, which are simply animals with a backbone and a skeleton. That makes the state the most diverse in the U.S., according to an article published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in March 2024.
Record wildfires swept through California in 2020 and 2021, burning more than 4.2 million hectares of land.
“Tragically, wildfires have killed or displaced nearly 3 billion animals. It made me wonder what was happening to our wildlife,” Jones, a U.S. Forest Service ecologist, was quoted as saying in the U.S. Department of Agriculture article.
Ecologist John Keane of the Pacific Southwest Research Station said spotted owls are a species of particular concern, according to the article. “Disasters caused by wildfires can destroy old-growth trees and dense forest patches that spotted owls depend on for nesting, shelter and foraging.”
