Anonymous posted this in the New Topics from Readers section.
“I know this issue has been covered on here already, but I thought this interview of Daniel Swain on the LA fires was worth a watch. Daniel Swain is extremely thoughtful, articulate, knowledgeable, and a well-respected scientist focused on CA.”
I have to admit, the whiplash idea was new to me this year. Especially since the Colorado Marshall fire had the same conditions, previous wet spring, plus fall and winter dryness with high winds, and I don’t remember it coming up. We have NCAR (the National Center for Atmospheric Research, what I call the Temple of Climate) in the neighborhood, so if whiplash had been involved, we might have heard about it.
Today Patrick Brown posted about “hydroclimate whiplash” and I’d like to draw your attention to some of his points.
“Los Angeles is burning, and accelerating hydroclimate whiplash is the key climate connection.”
That was the first line of the UCLA Press Release on a recently-published Nature review paper Swain et al. (2025): Hydroclimate Volatility on a Warming Earth.
Thanks in no small part to the huge journalistic audience that lead author Dr. Daniel Swain commands, the “climate whiplash” vernacular was immediately adopted in international headlines covering the recent Los Angeles fires:
- The New Yorker: Climate Whiplash and Fire Come to L.A.
- ABC News: How hydroclimate whiplash contributed to the severity of California wildfires
- Newsweek: Why a Rain ‘Whiplash’ Is to Blame for Los Angeles Fires
- The LA Times: Intensifying climate ‘whiplash’ set the stage for devastating California fires
- The Guardian: Climate ‘whiplash’ events increasing exponentially around world
- Financial Times: Fire and floods: the rise of climate whiplash
- Grist: The ‘weather whiplash’ fueling the Los Angeles fires is becoming more common
This coverage is not entirely organic as organizations like Covering Climate Now—which advise journalists on how to frame stories through a climate lens—highlighted climate whiplash as a good talking point for the Los Angeles fires.
I’d add this piece in Scientific American
Regardless, the paper has demonstrated incredible reach and is in the 99.99th percentile in terms of online attention for all research (not just climate research) of a similar age.
Most of us have no idea how or why certain outlets suddenly coordinate and highlight some scientists and dismiss others. For example in Shellenberger’s interview with Jon Keeley of USGS who has been in the climate/wildfire space for some time:
It all depends on who the journalist interviews. If they interview a climatologist who really doesn’t know very much about wildland vegetation and also has an agenda of demonstrating climate change, they’re going to see climate as the major driver. I don’t discount the importance of climate change. I think it very likely exacerbates what’s going on.But it’s not the only show in town. There are other things going on. And the important things going on in this case is an unusually extreme Santa Ana wind. Typically, Santa Ana winds are clocked at 30, 40 miles per hour. These are 60 to 70 miles per hour. It was unusually severe wind.
And it was coupled with an ignition source. We don’t know what that ignition source is, but we do know that two-thirds of all Santa Ana wind events never have a fire. And the only reason for that is that nobody starts a fire. There’s no ignition source. So it’s the combination of unusually severe winds, drier than normal conditions, and somehow people started a fire.
These concepts are taught regularly as a part of Climate Change 101 classes, including my own, and they are accepted as consensus climate science, articulated with “high confidence” in the IPCC’s most recent assessment report:
“A warmer climate increases moisture transport into weather systems, which, on average, makes wet seasons and events wetter (high confidence)”
“Warming over land drives an increase in atmospheric evaporative demand and the severity of droughts (high confidence).”
However, I like to point out that it is useful to break down lines of evidence in climate science into categories of
1) Historical observations/trends
2) Fundamental theory
3) Mathematical modeling
I know from teaching the “wet gets wetter, dry gets drier” concept that the evidence for increased variability in the same location is much stronger in the theory and modeling categories than it is in observations. This is important because observations should take precedence over the other two. Focusing on observations tells us a lot about how big of an effect we’re talking about (i.e., do we see major trends emerge through the noise of the observation system and natural variability?). Furthermore, a fundamental point of doing science is to explain observations. The canonical order of operations is that first you observe some phenomenon, and then you use the tools of theory and modeling to make sense of it.
So Brown goes back and looks at the datasets that Swain used, both locally and world-wide. For the more climate-y among us, his whole post is interesting.
I agree, Sharon, empirical data is extremely important. However, identifying statistical significance often requires decades of data, especially in complex system. Even if there’s statistical significance, there’s the issue with demonstrating causation vs. correlation. It is exceedingly difficult to prove a treatment is causing a change to the response variables in simple ecological systems, let alone doing so in complex systems. How long did it take to “prove” that cigarettes were killing people and how easy was it for those that wished to sew doubt to do so using statistical uncertainty? This is what deniers are doing with climate change, but it’s easier to do with climate change because the system is so dang complex and there’s no way to show causation. The level of certainty being demanded of the climate scientists is unreasonable and the outcome/risk of either side of the “debate” being wrong is not equal.
The Irony of Daniel Swain’s work is that in addition to increasing the probability of severe wildfire weather, climate change is increasing the likelihood of historical flood events, events that would dwarf the damage caused by the LA fires:
https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/ThreatsForestHealth/Climate/CI_Swain_etal_2018_Increasing_Precip_Volatility.pdf
Lastly, the fundamental science of how greenhouse gas driven climate change works is pretty darn basic and indisputable: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/video/climate-101-bill-nye How the predicted and observed changes to temperature affect other aspects of weather and climate are more complicated and uncertain.
I also think we should consider the credibility of those denying science or producing the science. Like the cigarette companies, the loudest climate deniers are often backed by extractive industries that have something to gain from denying. Another example is the timber industry’s take on wildfire, concluding that we just need to let them log like they did back in the 1980s and the problem is solved. Yeah, not conflict of interest there. In contrast, most of the scientists that produce science finding that climate change is correlated with human emissions (which are the vast majority of studies and scientist out there) have little to gain from their science. E.g., Daniel Swain has talked about death threats for his public outreach work and lives off of a university salary supported by grants.
This was brought up related to the Marshall Fire: https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/marshall-fire-boulder-colorado/
Great. thanks for that! Here’s what NOAA said about climate and the Marshall Fire, they focused on the winds. https://research.noaa.gov/looking-back-at-colorados-marshall-fire/
Human influence on climate change has been happening since about 200,000 years ago after Neanderthal learned to make fire with flint and pyrite by sprinkling manganese dioxide onto woody debris to lower the ignition point but they had cleared much of Southern Europe’s forests shortly after their arrival there as long ago as 800,000 years.
But today ash and soot from wildfires in the Siberian taiga are accelerating the loss of Arctic sea ice where Russia keeps sea lanes open driving more frequent and deeper polar vortexes that make the Santa Ana winds even more intense.
Released today.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/polar-vortex/polar-vortex-intensifications-overlooked-influencer