California wildfires are spreading and intensifying faster, putting more people in danger

LOS ANGELES - Just from what they've experienced over the years, California residents may suspect that wildfires have gotten more extreme amid a warmer and more drought-prone climate. A new paper in the journal Science puts that sentiment to the test, with startling findings: California fires spread almost four times faster in 2020 than they had in 2001. The study, authored by scientists from the University of Colorado, the University of California, Merced and the University of California, Los Angeles, also found that across the West, fires grew 250% more quickly in 2020 than they did in 2001. "People are pretty good at putting out all fires," said Park Williams, a UCLA professor and co-author of the study, but "the faster the fire, the more easily it can escape control." Although intuitive, the relationship between the speed at which a fire spreads and the damage it causes to structures and land was difficult to quantify until recent developments in satellite technology, he said. Now, scientists can plot "trends in the daily growth rates," he said. Using daily fire spread imagery for roughly 60,000 fires from 2001 to 2020, they were able to determine a relationship between damage and speed, Williams said. "During this 20-year study period, fires in the U.S. did indeed on average begin moving faster," he said. The 3% of fires with the fastest daily growth rates made up around 90% of property loss in the two decades studied.

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