February 25th at 1pm EST
Abstract: Abundant evidence suggests climate change has already increased wildfire risk in California, mainly due to increases in both mean and episodic extreme landscape-scale vegetation aridity. Warming temperatures and increasing evaporative demand have directly driven most of this observed trend, and will continue to be prominent with further warming. However, additional aspects of observed and/or projected climate change in California may further amplify wildfire risk by altering historical relationships between fuel aridity, fuel loading, and hydroclimate extremes. In this talk, I will consider recent evidence that seasonal shifts in the onset of California's "rainy season," combined with increasingly extreme swings between extremely wet and dry conditions, may combine to produce increases in wildfire risk that are "larger than the sum of their parts.
Presented by: Dr. Daniel Swain
Dr. Daniel Swain is a climate scientist focused on the dynamics and impacts of extreme events—including droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires—on a warming planet. Daniel holds joint appointments as a climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and as a research fellow at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. He engages extensively with journalists and other media partners, serving as a climate and weather science liaison to print, television, radio, and web-based outlets to facilitate accessible and accurate coverage and conversations surrounding climate change. Daniel is an alumnus of the University of California, Davis (B.S., Atmospheric Science) and of Stanford University (Ph.D., Earth System Science), and completed his postdoctoral work at UCLA. He also authors the widely-read Weather West blog (weatherwest.com), which provides real-time perspectives on California weather and climate, and can be found on Twitter (@Weather_West), Bluesky (@WeatherWest) and YouTube (@WeatherWest).
