Summarizing the Figures - Climate Warming Increases Extreme Daily Wildfire Growth Risk in California

About a week ago, Dr. Patrick Brown and other researchers including myself published a paper in Nature titled, "Climate Warming Increases Extreme Daily Wildfire Growth Risk in California."
Since then, this paper has received a fair bit of coverage.
In this video, I'll analyze the figures and summarize the story the paper is telling.
California has experienced enhanced extreme wildfire behaviour in recent years, leading to substantial loss of life and property. Some portion of the change in wildfire behaviour is attributable to anthropogenic climate warming, but formally quantifying this contribution is difficult because of numerous confounding factors6,7 and because wildfires are below the grid scale of global climate models. Here we use machine learning to quantify empirical relationships between temperature (as well as the influence of temperature on aridity) and the risk of extreme daily wildfire growth (greater than 10,000 acres) in California and find that the influence of temperature on the risk is primarily mediated through its influence on fuel moisture. We use the uncovered relationships to estimate the changes in extreme daily wildfire growth risk under anthropogenic warming by subjecting historical fires from 2003 to 2020 to differing background climatological temperatures and aridity conditions. We find that the influence of anthropogenic warming on the risk of extreme daily wildfire growth varies appreciably on a fire-by-fire and day-by-day basis, depending on whether or not climate warming pushes conditions over certain thresholds of aridity, such as 1.5 kPa of vapour-pressure deficit and 10% dead fuel moisture. So far, anthropogenic warming has enhanced the aggregate expected frequency of extreme daily wildfire growth by 25% (5-95 range of 14-36%), on average, relative to preindustrial conditions. But for some fires, there was approximately no change, and for other fires, the enhancement has been as much as 461%. When historical fires are subjected to a range of projected end-of-century conditions, the aggregate expected frequency of extreme daily wildfire growth events increases by 59% (5-95 range of 47-71%) under a low SSP1-2.6 emissions scenario compared with an increase of 172% (5-95 range of 156-188%) under a very high SSP5-8.5 emissions scenario, relative to preindustrial conditions.
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[@robertforrest7956]

Most excellent work Holt. There are so many factors that go with this whole scenario..! Population growth, weather patterns,etc etc... Thanks for helping to clarify the differences. You really can't say 100% exactly what the causes are....I get tired to of those that blame California for the fires when it's a world wide situation. I truly appreciate all your efforts you put into all your reports and updates to really keep us informed!! 🏆 Outstanding Service Holt Again, Thank You.