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California’s wildfires have become increasingly destructive in recent years. In the research my colleagues and I have conducted, it shows that wildfires in the US are up to four times larger and three times more frequent than they were in the 1980s and ’90s
By Rakesh Aggarwal
After a harsh winter, and a wonderful spring season, arrives April, and slow fires start engulfing the hill forests of Uttarakhand, now proliferated with pine, an exotic species, vulnerable to fires. As the dry summer sets in, the fire becomes an inferno, destroying forests, bio-diversity, flora and fauna, herbs and wild life, hearth and home. And it is almost inevitable, every summer, in the poverty-stricken, distant, rural hamlets of the Himalayan hills.
Alas, in the midst of a freezing winter, a devastating inferno has engulfed America’s richest city and its neighbourhood — Los Angeles, the residence of 212,100 millionaires, 496 centi-millionaires and 43 billionaires.
For years, wildfires across the globe, from the Uttarakhand hills to the American planes, from Amazon rain forests to the African dry lands, have become a regular phenomenon. After the 2024 Brazil wildfires, 62,131 wildfires were detected by the Global Wildfire Information System, making 2024 the Worst Year for Amazon fires since 2005. Even in the US, there were 66, 255 wildfires!
Over the years, the number of these wildfires are multiplying. According to satellite data from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, the number of fires from the beginning of 2024 to June 10, reflected a 935 per cent increase, compared to the same period in 2023, with 1,315 fires being reported, compared to 127 fires in 2023.
Often, barring natural disasters in the US, wildfires in developing countries, ranging from Uttarakhand to Brazil, evoke no public outrage, no breaking news, and it has little place in the media for its news-worthiness. Then, why has this wildfire in Los Angeles become such a hot global news?
Well, because LA is a Richie-Rich city, a dream factory, selling multi-coloured, fake dreams to the entire world; so much so that Hollywood is a real place in Los Angeles, California, it being a district in the central part of the city.
Let us understand the major fires in LA.
- Pacific Palisades fire: More than 5,300 structures were damaged or destroyed.
- Eaton fire: More than 5,000 structures were destroyed.
- Other fires: Thousands of other structures burned.
- Total: As many as 12,000 homes, businesses, and other structures may have been destroyed.
Some of the ultra-glamorous homes, worth millions, of the stars and other big names were reportedly turned into ashes in the LA fire: they belonged to Adam Brody and Leighton Meester’s home in Pacific Palisades, Paris Hilton, Llly Crystal, Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag, Mandy Moore, Steve Guttenberg, Chet Hanks, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Kid Cudi, Mark Hamill, Ben Affleck, and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.
The entire California region is facing a severe draught condition for a long time, a clear consequence of climate change, as major research institutes have proved. The signs are all there — intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea level, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity.
From the poles to the tropics, climate change is disrupting ecosystems. Even a seemingly slight shift in temperature can cause dramatic changes that ripple through food webs and the environment.
This catastrophic impact, like melting sea ice, is most apparent in the world’s coldest regions—the poles. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as anywhere else on earth, leading to the rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets, resulting in rising sea level. Scientists predict that melting sea ice and glaciers, as well as the fact that warmer water expands in volume, could cause the sea level to rise as much as 6.6 feet by the end of the century, should we fail to curb emissions. The extent (and pace) of this change would devastate low-lying regions, including island nations and densely populated coastal cities like New York City and Mumbai.
It also causes flooding, such as a severe flood hit Uttarakhand in June 2013, killing more than 500 people and destroying thousands of homes. In addition to coastal flooding caused by the rise in sea level, climate change influences the factors that result in inland and urban flooding — snow-melt and heavy rain.
As global warming continues to exacerbate the rise in sea level, and extreme weather, our nation’s floodplains are expected to grow by approximately 45 per cent by 2100. In 2022, deadly flooding in Pakistan—which inundated as much as a third of the country—resulted from torrential rains mixed with melting glaciers and snow.
Antarctica is losing ice mass (melting) at an average rate of about 150 billion tonnes per year, and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tonnes per year, adding to a rise in sea level. Data from NASA’s GRACE and GRACE Follow-On satellites show that the land ice sheets in both Antarctica (upper chart) and Greenland (lower chart) have been losing mass since 2002.
The GRACE mission ended in June 2017. The GRACE Follow-On mission began collecting data in June 2018 and is continuing to monitor ice sheets. This record includes new data-processing methods and is updated as more numbers come in, with a delay of up to two months.
This is important because the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica store about two-thirds of all the fresh water on Earth. They are losing ice due to the ongoing warming of Earth’s surface and ocean. Melting water coming from these ice sheets is responsible for about one-third of the global average rise in sea level since 1993.
Several Indian institutes/universities/organizations (Geological Survey of India, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Space Application Centre (SAC), Indian Institute of Science etc). monitor Himalayan glaciers for various scientific studies, including melting glaciers. They have reported accelerated heterogeneous mass loss in the Himalayan glaciers. Rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite.
Indeed, decades of drought in California have been followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years (2022 and 2023), but it flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024. Scientists say in a new study that climate change has boosted what they call these ‘whiplash’ conditions globally by 31-66 per cent since the middle of the 20th century.
The wildfires have spread across parts of the Los Angeles area, leading to at least five deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for more than 179,000 people. Wildfires that have torn through the homes of people here could end up making climate change worse, experts have warned. California governor Gavin Newsom has said the wildfires – which killed 24 people soon after, and have forced 100,000 to evacuate – could be the most devastating natural disaster in US history.
Dangerously high winds were expected to return to the city during this phase, harming efforts to extinguish two massive wildfires that have destroyed thousands of buildings. The wildfires also hold the potential to create a ‘vicious cycle’ that worsens climate change, warns Dr Kirsten Lees, professor of environmental science & geography at the University of Derby.
The LA inferno is going to add CO2 to the environment aggravating climate change, as wildfires have added 5.3 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere in 2022, according to ‘Carbon Brief’. That is more than large industrialised nations – in fact, more than that any country contributed in 2022, except China.
Extreme temperatures play a dangerous role in wildfires. Heat dries out vegetation, making it more flammable. Under these conditions, wildfires ignite more easily, spread faster and burn with higher intensity. In western America, the aridity attributed to climate change has doubled the amount of forestland that has burned since 1984.
Compounding the problem is the rapid rise in night-time temperatures, now increasing faster than daytime temperatures. Nights, which used to offer a reprieve with cooler conditions and higher humidity, do so less often, allowing fires to continue raging without pause.
Finally, winds contribute to the rapid expansion, increased intensity and erratic behaviour of wildfires. Wind gusts push heat and embers ahead of the fire front and can cause it to rapidly expand. They can also create spot fires in new locations.
Additionally, winds enhance combustion by supplying more oxygen, which can make the fire more unpredictable and challenging to control. Usually driven by high winds, fast-moving fires have become more frequent in recent decades.
Investigators are trying to determine what caused several wind-driven wildfires that have destroyed thousands of homes across the Los Angeles area this January, 2025. Given the locations, and lack of lightning at the time, it’s likely that utility infrastructure and other equipment, or man-made activities were involved.
California’s wildfires have become increasingly destructive in recent years. In the research my colleagues and I have conducted, it shows that wildfires in the US are up to four times larger and three times more frequent than they were in the 1980s and ’90s. Fast-moving fires have been particularly destructive, accounting for 78 per cent of structures destroyed and 61 per cent of suppression costs between 2001 and 2020.
NASA has been warning against the impact of climate change for years, so much so that Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, protested climate change by chaining himself to a JP Morgan Bank in Los Angeles in April 2022. Kalmus was part of a group of scientists who were arrested for their actions and he left LA for good in the same year!
Donald Trump has reportedly signed an executive order, pulling out the US from climate change regulations. The US is the world’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter, after China. Despite having just 30 per cent population than that of China, it has been out of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement; Trump ridicules climate change and terms it “a Chinese Hoax”.
It only means that the world’s most powerful military-industrial complex, selling the mythical promise of MAGA, has no option but to face many more ecological disasters, such as what happened in LA, in the years to come!
Rakesh Agarwal is an ecologist, social activist and writer based in Dehradun, Uttarakhand.