IoES in the News

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The Carr Fire reached an all time high with a 143 mph fire tornado, but it is not expected to be a part of the new normal. UCLA's Daniel Swain said, “This won’t be the primary risk associated with wildfire, ever. But under the right atmospheric conditions, all else being equal, the increasing intensity of fires themselves will play a role in producing these localized fire weather conditions that can be quite extreme.”

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UCLA's Daniel Swain explains the fire tornado in Redding, CA. "It had the intensity of a regular old tornado but it had the formation mechanism of what you’d see on a large fire," he said. "It shared more characteristics with a traditional tornado than we’d expect to see." 

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Trevon Fuller, an ecologist at UCLA, linked deforestation in the Congo to the US market. Fuller followed the demand driving the deforestation and discovered that the wood is going to…

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The fire tornado that formed from the Carr Fire impressed many climate scholars and scientists including UCLA's Daniel Swain. It may the "strongest tornado in California history", further damaging more homes in Redding, CA.

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"UCLA law scholar Ann Carlson has explained in detail, this argument has already been explicitly rejected by two different federal courts, each of whom concluded that California’s greenhouse gas tailpipe standards are not pre-empted by EPCA because protecting public health by regulating greenhouse gas emissions is not the same thing as increasing energy efficiency by regulating fuel economy."

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Trump's administration looks to revoke California's authority to regulate tailpipe emissions. “There’s a great irony in Trump releasing this plan just as California is burning,” said Ann Carlson, UCLA environmental law professor. “We’re already seeing catastrophic forest fires as a result of climate change, and the administration’s answer is that everyone should drive a Hummer.”

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UCLA Luskin Center  for Innovation director, JR DeShazo, featured on KPBS Midday Edition and spoke about his impact alternative energy programs report. In his report, he uncovered in that Community Choice Aggregation groups are pushing CA utilities to move toward renewable energy to stay competitive.

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UCLA environmental law professor, Ann Carlson, joined Lauren Sommer on NPR's All Things Considered. Carlson speaks on the Trump administration trying to revoke California's authority to set its own tailpipe emission standards. The state has a strong case to keep its fuel-efficiency standards.

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Trump's biggest assault on the environment yet – UCLA environmental law professor, Ann Carlson, and co- executive director of the Emmett Institute, Cara Horowitz, wrote an op-ed addressing EPA's new proposal. The proposal looks to revoke California's authority to cut car tailpipe emissions regardless of CA being a leader in improving air quality.

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“The rise of CCAs (Community Choice Aggregators) has had both direct and indirect positive effects on overall renewable energy consumed in California, leading the state to meet its 2030 RPS targets approximately ten years in advance,” write Luskin Center director JR DeShazo. People in CCAs are using their purchasing power to push larger utilities to work toward increasing renewable energy.

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“Some fire scientists would roll their eyes at the term ‘fire tornado,'” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But they aren’t rolling their eyes on this one.” Craig Clements, an associate professor at San José State University, went to investigate the site and "what was left was unlike anything he’d ever seen." 

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“What has been really unusual in the Western U.S. this summer has been the sustained heat,” said Alex Hall, UCLA climate scientist. “It really pulls water out of vegetation, and that sets up conditions for big fires,” – building up the largest fires and fire season in California history.

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By Sonia Aronson A faculty committee is in the process of selecting three finalists for this year’s Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award. In the meantime, here’s the next group of…

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Climate change is creating the perfect dry conditions that allow wildfires to ignite and thrive. “This fire vortex, this pretty terrifying tornado-like feature, and I don’t say that lightly… was made possible by the extreme heat produced by this fire,” said Daniel Swain about the Carr Fire. 

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The Carr fire has done uncommon movement – jumping, turning, and becoming fire tornadoes. Daniel Swain, UCLA climate scientist, talking about fire tornadoes, “Not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite…

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“The temperatures have just been almost inexorably warmer all the time... burn more intensely if the fuels are extremely dry,” said UCLA's Daniel Swain. The heat wave created the dry conditions for wildfires to explode and burn throughout California.

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"California’s sweltering heat and deadly fires this month are no coincidence." Time looks into the correlation between the prolonged heat wave and explosive wildfires. UCLA's Daniel Swain explained how the heat is contributing to California's most damaging fire season.

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The warm and dry season outweighs the wet season. California is in one of its biggest fire season. Northern California saw its wettest winter on record in 2016-17, followed by its warmest summer. That led to extremely dry vegetation by the fall — just before the devastating Santa Rosa fire hit, UCLA's Daniel Swain said.

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Nuns bring local salamander colony back to life. Ambystoma dumerilii once thrived in Lake Pátzcuaro in Mexico, however, as the lake declined, so did the number of salamanders. The nuns took notice and brought them into the convent. The convent now house about 300 salamanders and UCLA's Dr. Brad Shaffer said, "if they’re relatively unrelated, is a very, very healthy, large stock to be working from" to bring back the endangered species.

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“We’re now seeing decades-old scientific predictions being validated in the real world, right before our eyes,” said UCLA climate scientist, Daniel Swain. We can no longer afford to be skeptic…

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A heavy layer of smoke, called an inversion, is covering and making the ground invisible to fire fighting aircraft. Because Sacramento Valley "is a bowl, surrounded on three sides by mountains. It is only open to the south... The air is stagnant at the top, the north end, of the valley,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. Without visibility, the fire fighting aircraft cannot navigate through the smoke and fly safely.

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“We have these long, hot, dry summers that are getting progressively drier… We’re not at the end of summer yet,” Swain told The Sacramento Bee about the conditions that have…

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UCLA School of Law now offers a specialization in environmental law. Sean Hecht, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment said the addition was pushed not only by administrative planning, but student interest as well.

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Are wildfires all around the world the new normal? UCLA professor Glen MacDonald said, this is not the new normal, this is only a stepping store. He joined Madeline Brand on KCRW's Press Play to talk about the global wildfires and it is featured in the third section under "Fires burning all over the world: We might look back and say 'those were the good old days'".

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“Over decades there has been a trend toward less moisture in the soil and forest, and that is affecting how dry the vegetation is becoming in summer,” said UCLA's Daniel Swain in the New York Times. These trends are ultimately increasing the risk of wildfires and contributing to Yosemite's largest closing.