Fast Fires Reuters.  Ally J. Levine, Clare Farley, Tiana McGee and Daisy Chung Jan. 24, 2025    Fires are growing faster in the western United States. Ally J. Levine, Clare Farley, Tiana McGee and Daisy Chung The fastest of them – termed “fast fires” – often erupt near towns and account for most structural wildfire damage according to researchers who analyzed over 60,000 fires from 2001 to 2020. Fast fires grow about 4,000 acres or more on their fastest day, at least two football fields a minute. That single-day growth threshold for a “fast fire” is even higher in California at almost four football fields a minute. Humans and our infrastructure start nearly all of the fires that threaten our homes. Exactly why fires become fast is a developing area of research, but weather and fuel conditions can feed the speed. Of the 20 fastest fires between 2001 and 2020, 16 destroyed structures and all but one fire came within 2.5 miles of a property. Many fast fires threaten structuresAlthough many fast fires start near populated areas, the location alone doesn't determine whether a fire will be fast. “Probably hundreds, maybe thousands of ignitions happen around the Hollywood Hills every year. Most of those fires are able to be put out,” said Maxwell Cook, a research assistant with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and geography PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Climate change is not just a problem of physics but a crisis of justice. In an exclusive extract from Friederike Otto’s new book, she says climate disasters result from inequality as well as fossil fuels. Guardian Friederike Otto 18 Apr 2025 My research as a climate scientist is in attribution science. Together with my team, I analyse extreme weather events and answer the questions of whether, and to what extent, human-induced climate change has altered their frequency, intensity and duration. When I first began my research, most scientists claimed that these questions couldn’t be answered. There were technical reasons for this: for a long time, researchers had no weather models capable of mapping all climate-related processes in sufficient detail. But there were other reasons that had less to do with the research itself.

Let’s imagine extreme flooding in Munich, Rome or London and heavy rainfall in the slums of Durban on the South African coast. How the people in these various places experience this extreme weather depends on the local economic and social conditions and, fundamentally, on their political situation. Researching weather – and thus, the role of climate change – in the way I do is always political, and this makes it an uncomfortable topic for many scientists. I believe it is important to show that both obstacles – the technical and the political – can be overcome; our climate models have become better and better, and we are coming to realise that research cannot take place at a remove from the real world. For example, to know exactly how big the risk of a drought is – where and for whom – we need a whole lot of information. Three main factors come into play: the natural hazard, our exposure to the hazard, and the vulnerability with which we approach it. In west Africa in 2022, entire regions suffered from dramatic flooding during the rainy season. These floods were caused in part by above-average rainfall that, as my team and I discovered, was significantly more intense than it would have been without climate change. The rainfall was considered a “natural hazard,” but exacerbated so significantly by human-caused climate change that it was anything but natural.

To a large extent, these floods – particularly in Nigeria – were caused by the release of a dam in neighbouring Cameroon, which flooded large parts of the densely populated Niger delta, home to more than 30 million people. The risk from rainfall is particularly high, both for the people and for local ecosystems and infrastructure such as buildings, bridges, roads and water supply lines. This region is uniquely exposed to weather and natural hazards. A dam was supposed to have been built in the Nigerian part of the delta to hold back the water, but it was never built.Given the poor infrastructure and high rates of poverty, people in this area are particularly vulnerable, affected much more adversely than those in other areas......read on        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/18/climate-change-is-not-just-a-problem-of-physics-but-a-crisis-of-justice