Global Warming Not Behind SoCal Fires
The devastating blazes that swept through Southern California these last few days were largely unrelated to changing weather patterns due to global warming, as some newscasters and pundits have stated. I have been a believer in the danger of global warming for more than two decades, but I don't think it's the culprit here. Rather, the blame for the conflagrations should be placed on chaparral, a growing population, and inadequate suburban planning. Fire in the hills behind Malibu and San Diego is inevitable, and at the moment at least is not connected to our pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
It is true that droughts in the West triggered by global warming and/or natural cycles indeed lay conditions for devastating forest fires in higher elevations. This holds true for the conifer forests above 6,000 feet or so in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and other local ranges. It may have played a role in the Lake Arrowhead blazes. But for most of the Southland, it's a different scenario.
The Santa Monica mountains and many other hills and ranges in Southern California are primarily covered by the dense prickly shrubs and small trees known collectively as chaparral. This native vegetation blankets our mountain slopes up to the point at which conifers take over. Manzanita, scrub oak, chamise, laurel sumac, California lilac, and buckwheat are among the predominant species of chaparral. The toyon shrub, also called "Christmas berry" or "California holly," reputedly put the "holly" in Hollywood. Chaparral thrives in Southern California's Mediterranean climate of mild winters with moderate precipitation and hot, dry summers.
Chaparral adapted over the millennia before man's arrival to natural fires caused by lightning strikes. Most chaparral species can't reproduce without brushfires. They have hard seeds that will not germinate without fire; they lie dormant in the earth for decades until the next blaze comes along. Many chaparral species also sprout back vegetatively from root crowns after a fire or other disturbance. "Fire ecology" studies such interrelationships. Where there's chaparral, there are going to be wildfires.
Over the long run, high rainfall during wetter years can actually set the stage for massive conflagrations during the dry season. When the rainy season (usually November through April) is wetter than usual, the chaparral grows abundantly, laying in extra fuel for the next big blaze. The most flammable areas of chaparral are those with the most biomass, typically patches at least thirty to forty years old. The older the chaparral, the more potential there is for a catastrophic wildfire.
Global warming could play an exacerbating role if it causes Southern California rainfall to increase. But the numbers don't show that happening in L.A., for example, nor do they show annual precipitation to be varying more than usual there. Los Angeles has rainfall records stretching back to 1877. Downtown L.A. averaged 15.11 inches from 1877-2005, according to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). While Los Angeles had only 3.21 inches in 2006-07, its all-time low, and 37.25 inches in '04-05, close to its record high, those numbers are not unexpected. L.A. has had seven seasons of rain above 30 inches since 1877, and seven years in the four to six inch range. It's had 35 seasons below 10 inches, and 25 above 20 inches. Annual rainfall fluctuates greatly now, just as it did a century ago. The last ten years have averaged 15.3 inches, close to the norm. Global warming could cause the swings to get more extreme, but that hasn't happened yet. Just check the NOAA graphs.
The extremely dry winter of 2006-07 created prime conditions for this year's fires, but the potential for wildfires is always present in chaparral areas. The Southland's long hot dry season (usually May through October) and the fall's Santa Ana winds inevitably create dangerously flammable conditions. And a 50mph Santa Ana on a 90-degree day will dry out brush by itself and threaten to take any fire to a catastrophic level.
Chaparral will burn with regularity over the long term, and anyone who chooses to live near it will eventually be threatened by a brush fire. As California's population swells, bringing with it an increase in accidental and intentional fires, and as developers continue to build new homes without appropriate planning in foothills and former wilderness areas, we can expect the fire danger to grow. For the near future, at least, these are the major factors in our wildfires, not global warming.
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Global warming, reckless land management - there's plenty of blame to go around.
As a SoCal born and bred resident glad some sense and a little bit of California knowledge was thrown in the mix because I'am getting so tired of people with their agendas.
No this is not global warming and yes we have drought that has lasted as long as 7 years and if people would only learn about Califonia they would know this.
This is our fire season and within a couple of months it will be flood season and we are do for an earthquake.
The gale force winds, called the Santa Anas was named for the famous Mexican General Santa Ana....over 200 years ago. This is not a new phenomenon most people in SoCal is very versed in Fire and Flood we live with it everyday. We know the signs and for the people in San Diego...STOP BEING SO CHEAP AND GET A COUNTY FIRE DEPT.
San Diego is the land of the conservative republicans and they don't want to spend the money even though they have had tremendous population growth in the Greater San Diego Area.
These fires really wasn't the largest fire...We had one that took 4 months to put out and burned a million acres but because it was in a mostly non populated it didn't get the news tha it deserved.
Hey, Chris, get your facts straight.
Even the Forestry Service has had to recognize a shift that make the seasons 2 MONTHS longer.
In the 1970's, a 100,000 acre fire was "a big fire this season - we pulled in everybody".
Now a 100k acre fire is just another day at the office and the big fires are 600k to 800k.
Fire season 60 to 90 days longer depending on location, largest fires 6x to 8x larger.
"The devastating blazes that swept through Southern California these last few days were largely unrelated to changing weather patterns due to global warming..."
We need to send you to Republican fact check school so that you can at least misrepresent the truth with pride and dignity instead of shame.
LACK OF RAIN WAS NOT THE CAUSE THING BURN FAST!
OK, SURE I BELIVE THAT.
HEY, I GOT A BRIDGE FOR SELL.
IT IS ALREADY DOWN WANT TO BUY IT?
The odds are pretty much where the effect of global warming comes in. The chaparral is essentially just tinder...it's always going to be there in some quantity, and it does contribute to the odds when there is more of it. But a longer fire season also can lead to drier timber and other vegetation. If a fire happens just before the earliest rainfall, a fire could be potentially quite a bit more uncontrollable due to the lower than normal amount of moisture in all the other combustibles around the chaparral. This is in addition to raising the odds of a major fire due to simply a longer fire season, of course.
So, human-aided global warming isn't probably the sole cause, but it probably is a contributing factor regardless. Just a bit from someone who has fought fires before in Eastern Oregon. :)
I drove across southern and central California over Labor Day weekend. It was very visibly apparent to this CA native (no longer living there) that things were far drier than normal, even for late summer - the fact that CA had had no appreciable rain in a full year is unquestionably a factor. Everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - was bone dry and sere. Plants that normally would have displayed dry brown leaves didn't look like they were going dormant for winter - they looked DEAD. Sere, shriveled beyond anything I've ever seen. Frankly, I was concerned the whole time I was there that the inferno would start any minute, and I could tell it was going to be very, very bad. As bad as this has been, I'm surprised it wasn't worse.
Yes, the fact that housing continues to grow into areas that are 'scenic' and prone to fire damage played a big part. But the drought that's going on now may well be the worst in my half century of life. It's not unreasonable to see that the drought is related to global warming - and that doesn't change whether or not global warming is due to human activity.
As far as rainfall records in LA, what they show, as they show throughout the west, is that rainfall is slowly decreasing. Like any such charting, it's not a straight line - there are peaks and valleys, and even an occasional 'wet' decade. But the 100 year trend is for decreased precipitation.
I am impressed that, even before these fires are out, you have a sweeping diagnosis. A few things are missing from your insightful and thorough analysis. Can you please, for example, elaborate on the extent of chaparral scrub habitat in Southern California today as opposed to 5, 10, 15, 20, and 30 years ago? Can you disaggregate your data on rainfall to include yearly totals and not the obfuscating averages you quote?
Your biology needs serious augmentation. There are plenty of sites on the web which give basic information very contrary to yours. You might start by reading
http://www.californiachaparral.com/aboutus.html
Yes, and a little less "cherry Picking"
That you for a little injection of sanity into this nuthouse.
Thank you for this very sensible presentation of the current situation. Climate change is a fact that is radically changing our world, but the current fires have other causes as well.
There was also suspected arson, though probably not Al Qaida unless you believe Fox.
Let me get this straight--You write about music, culture and the arts, primarily.
And your degree that would give you the expertise to address this topic is in what?
You've named a whole bunch of plants and flowers and quoted some rainfall statistics, but that's it.
On the other side, there's a big group of real scientists who say otherwise.
Hmmmm...Who am I gonna believe?
The man is not saying there is no global warming. He is saying that if you build a house in or around chaparral it will at some point be threatened by wildfire.
I live in NJ (sorry no degrees) and we have the pinelands and they burn when conditions are dry. You just don't build houses there and if you do they might burn down.
These condition exist whether we have global warming or not or may be worsened by it.
This where the small-government model fails us. Where money hungry developers and activist judges need to be regulated.
Dont Say That; otherwise we cant fool the people and impliment our socialist agenda....
Please elaborate.
Yes. Please do explain this ominous 'socialist agenda' that you Rush Limbo listeners keep talking about. Is it anything like the communist agenda behind the flouridation of water in the 1950s?
So keep driving that Hummer and don't worry about the future!
Hey I bought carbon credits--don't yell at me!
My hummer is environmentally neutral.
Thank god we have some sanity.
Is your version of "sanity" limited to dismissing any link between the fires being more likely or of a higher intensity or lasting longer (not the same as the fires being *caused* by directly and only due to global warming) or does your version of sanity also include dismissing any notion that humans contribute greatly to warming and or that global warming is a serious threat?
PS---If global warming is NOT a real issue it's interesting that the White House would go out its way to edit CDC testimony on the subject, right(?)...
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071024-global-warming.html
>ihavenophobias<
What a cute screen name; I have no phobias either, unless you count my fear of having my head locked into a wire mesh helmet and then introducing rabid rats into the cage to gnaw the living flesh off my face (but i digress).
I believe Mr McGowan is referring to the phenomena of too many idiots here in SoCAl living next to the firewood pile; fires here in SoCal (and let's not forget our mudslides) are a *regular* feature of suburban California living and *always have been*.
As a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, I have watched with horror as millions of ignoramuses have moved into Southern California and right smack into the fire and flood zones, lured by the inaccurate images on TV and in the travel brochures: the almost infinite beaches, lush lawns, elegant palm trees, snow-capped mountain peaks, etc., not realizing that LA is a near-desert and the water to maintain those lush lawns comes from 300 miles away; either the Owens valley or the Colorado River (water-starving both of the originating areas, incidentally).
It rained like hell a year and a half ago (but not recently) and the chaparral grew like crazy and the hillsides were green green, looking for all the world like the Irish countryside for about a minute. Then the rains stopped, the chaparral dried up and became tinder.
In the case of one fire zone, a pyromaniac set three accelerant fires, and in another, a spark from a welding machine touched off a blaze that (combined) consumed an area the size of Idaho. Almost every single square inch of which is prime fire zone, right smack in the chaparral where you are not supposed to go, much less actually live.
McGowan is right: global warming - while very real and a definite cause of concern - is not responsible for this particular series of fires in this particular place; human idiocy is.
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