A Weather Event With Fire Embedded

As the embers go cold, the smoke clears and the ashes are carted off in Los Angeles a stark reality emerges: not just winds but climate change played a significant role in this deadly and destructive event.A new World Weather Attribution study found that human-caused climate change increased the likelihood of extreme fire conditions by 35 percent and intensified their severity.In this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast, Daniel Swain, a leading climate scientist at UCLA and the University of California’s Agricultural and Natural Resources division, frames the January disaster not simply as a fire event, but as “an extreme weather event with fire embedded in it.” This distinction, he explains, is crucial for understanding how climate change is reshaping fire risks. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe