UCR Climate Expert Speaks On LA Fires: 'We have To Rethink Everything'

RIVERSIDE, CA — Nearly 40,000 acres have burned in Los Angeles along the coast and inland between the Palisades and Eaton fires over the span of 10 days. A climate scientist with University of California, Riverside says it's time to talk about what led up to the disaster and how the next one could be prevented.

In a Q&A with UC Riverside News, Francesca Hopkins, associate professor of climate change and sustainability, she explained that despite a lot of finger-pointing, scientists know that the fire risks have been decades in the making amid changing climate behaviors.

"I think what’s so unique and scary about these fires is that they’re happening in January," she said. "We have good evidence that the rainy season has been getting shorter in Southern California. The amount of rainfall hasn’t changed, just the length of the season. This is all very consistent with a warming climate. This is all going to be the new normal. We’ll have more fuel growing and drier fuels. That’s the story with climate change. "

Weather officials and scientists alike have been warning of impending high fire risk in California as the state's brush and wildlands became dry amid arid conditions without any rain in sight.

"In Southern California, we had two really wet winters, 2023 and 2024. Since plant growth is limited by the amount of water available, that gave us a lot of extra plant biomass," she said. "But we haven’t had rain in eight months, so now we’re having drought. Our summertime dry Mediterranean climate has dried out all the biomass, creating a massive amount of fuel for fires to burn."

Hopkins, who runs the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Lab at UCR, explained how carbon emissions from human activities turn into explosive fires.

"As a direct result of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, the atmosphere is warmer than it used to be," Hopkins said. "Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide or methane create something like a blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet warmer."

When asked how Californians can adapt to this new normal, Hopkins said: We have to rethink everything."

"You shouldn’t build in fire prone areas of course. We have to build smarter, and this is our opportunity to build more compact and walkable cities, not single-family homes and definitely not in the urban wildland interface," she said. "Cities are going to have to think about vegetation management in a way they haven’t before. We shouldn't continue to build stick frame houses."

Hopkins suggested an idea she says is worth exploring: paying loggers not to produce timber for housing but to grow trees specifically for carbon sequestration.

"We can harvest the trees and then bury them. You can retard decomposition significantly by burying them in clay soils," Hopkins said, citing recent studies that have found logs preserved for thousands of years when buried this way.

"We need to be creative. There are so many solutions potentially staring us in the face."

The four most destructive wildfires in California have all occurred since 2018, according to CalFire. And the Palisades Fire, which is still smoldering in LA, is on track to becoming one of the worst natural disasters the county has ever faced. It is currently the fourth most destructive wildfire in California history.

Residents may also need to commit to changes that are not immediately obvious to prevent wildfires of this magnitude, Hopkins said.

"Maybe we should rethink our traditional foods as well, which is one of the hardest things to change," she said. "But we know beef has a huge greenhouse gas footprint. Maybe our traditions are not serving us."

Read more of the Q&A with Hopkins here.

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