California's Leadership On Climate Is Natural - Being In The Crosshairs Does That To You

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Climate science backs up Miller’s observation. The state’s wildfire seasons are lasting longer and burning stronger due to human-caused climate change, as rising temperatures make vegetation drier and causes states like California to whip between very dry and very wet seasons. These current fires are so bad because of a mixture of dry foliage and low humidity, but also because of hot, dry winds blowing up to 70 miles per hour. This seasonal high wind, known as the Santa Ana winds, is not unusual for this time of year, climate scientist Daniel Swain told the Verge. But some scientists believe climate change “may be making these strong winds drier,” according to the New York Times.

These observations are nothing new to most Californians, who have known for a while that many of global climate change’s worst impacts affect their state. The news keeps getting worse: Just this week, a new study in the journal Nature Communications found that a persistent atmospheric high-pressure ridge in the Pacific Ocean could occur more often with climate change, causing more frequent and more dangerous droughts in the state. Jennifer Francis, a research professor at Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, told me this has implications for the Santa Ana winds as well. “The [high-pressure ridge] not only causes hot, dry weather in CA, but also tends to create offshore winds—known as Santa Ana winds—that often fan wildfires,” she said.

These fearsome trends are precisely why California is the most aggressive state on climate policy in the country. State Governor Jerry Brown led the coalition of U.S. states who went to France this year to tell the world that they would meet the terms of the Paris agreement to fight climate change, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to pull the country out. The state has the toughest fuel-economy standards in the nation, and some of the toughest emissions regulations on the fossil fuel industry. The state government even has a Climate Action Team that works to coordinate various emissions reductions programs across the state.

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This year’s mind-boggling extreme weather has shown us that climate change will leave few Americans untouched. And yet, so many states refuse to do much about it. That angers climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “The other states—Florida, Texas, Oklahoma—are under the control of climate change-denying politicians who continue to bury their head in the sand about climate change as they do the bidding of the fossil fuel interests who fund them, with the people they are supposed to be representing paying the cost in the form of devastating climate change-aggravated damage,” he said.

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https://newrepublic.com/article/146140/california-climate-change-wildfires