Michael Rawlins Discusses Los Angeles Fires and Climate Change with 'Boston Globe'

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In a new Boston Globe article on the recent Los Angeles wildfires, author Erin Douglas argued that "wildfires only need three key ingredients: heat, fuel, and oxygen. With just the right mix of each, they can quickly rage out of control. Climate change has made that dangerous combination easier than ever to cook up, particularly through intensifying droughts."

For Greater Los Angeles, a rainy winter spurred rapid plant growth, but summer heat dried the vegetation, which drought and the seasonal Santa Ana winds turned into fuel for fast-spreading wildfires across steep hills. Though Southern California's climate is quite different from that of the Northeast, it's worth noting that "dry conditions, warm temperatures, and lots of vegetation also led to an 'unprecedented' fall fire season in Massachusetts last year—which could resume in the spring if conditions do not improve."

In the article, Douglas interviews Michael Rawlins—extension associate professor in the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences and the associate director of the Climate System Research Center at UMass Amherst—to learn how intensifying wildfires in California, Massachusetts, and other geographies are predictable externalities of a warming world:

“In the absence of aggressive measures to rein in our reliance on fossil fuels, it's going to continue to get warmer, and we will unfortunately continue to see these quite worrisome impacts," said Rawlins of UMass.

— The Boston Globe

Click here to read the Boston Globe article. Or, if you have access to UMass Amherst Libraries, you can read Boston Globe articles through ProQuest.