Drought had parched the plants and brush from the summer, rendering them tinder-ready. The drought was prolonged due to the absence of extensive winter rains. Then the blistering Santa Ana winds blew with gusts reaching over 80 miles per hour.
Fires splashed across Eaton and Palisades killed more than 16,000 homes and buildings. With this inferno raging and so great, firefighters had little hope of having any kind of control.
Recent studies are providing evidence of the climate-change fingerprints on just those wildfires other extreme conditions made worse. These conditions include aspects like warmer temperatures and a drier atmosphere, trends generated by heat-trapping gases, largely from the burning of fossil fuels. Those two assessments were U.C.L.A.s and World Weather Attribution, a coalition of international scientists.
Some other extreme conditions that might have caused the fires in Los Angeles-getting wind and extreme dryness- we find it a bit of scientific struggle to ascertain what nature of influence climate change may carry.