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UCLA team simulates January 2025 wildfires; finds fuels dryness and wind extremes combined to create urban fire spread
Summary
UCLA researchers reported initial attribution and high-resolution simulation results showing that a combination of unusually dry fuels and extreme Santa Ana winds allowed January 2025 fires to propagate into urban neighborhoods; preliminary simulations suggest structure hardening would have reduced ignitions.
Dr. Alex Hall, director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, briefed the board on rapid-response research into the January 2025 California wildfires and described early simulation work that seeks to quantify how climate variability and climate change influenced the fires.
Hall and colleagues published an initial attribution analysis within weeks of the fires that separated two major drivers: (1) unusually warm summer temperatures that contributed to drying fuel moisture and (2) an unusually dry start to the wet season that—together—left fuels much drier than typical. Hall summarized the team’s finding that roughly one quarter of the anomalous fuel dryness could be attributed to summer warmth (a factor likely influenced by climate change), while the remainder…
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