@article{10902/29802,
year = {2023},
month = {6},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10902/29802},
abstract = {Record-breaking summer forest fires have become a regular occurrence in California. Observations  
indicate  a  fivefold  increase  in  summer  burned  area  (BA)  in  forests  in northern and central California during 1996 to 2021 relative to 1971 to 1995. While the higher temperature and increased dryness have been suggested to be the leading causes of increased BA, the extent to which BA changes are due to natural variability or anthropogenic climate change remains unresolved. Here, we develop a climate-driven model of summer BA evolution in California and combine it with natural-only and historical climate simulations to assess the importance of anthropogenic climate change on increased BA. Our results indicate that nearly all the observed increase in BA is due to anthropogenic climate change as historical model simulations accounting for anthropogenic forcing yield 172% (range 84 to 310%) more area burned than simula- tions with natural forcing only. We detect the signal of combined historical forcing on the observed BA emerging in 2001 with no 
detectable influence of the natural forcing alone. In addition, even when considering fuel limitations from fire-fuel feedbacks, a 3 to 52% increase in BA relative to the last decades is expected in the next decades (2031
to 2050), highlighting the need for proactive adaptations.},
organization = {We thank Benjamin D. Santer, Hideo Shiogama, and Nathan P. Gillett for their helpful comments. M.T. acknowledges funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the Ramón y Cajal Grant Reference RYC2019-027115-I and through the project ONFIRE, grant PID2021-123193OB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033. Y.Z. was supported by NOAA's Climate Program Office's Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections Program (grant NA20OAR4310426). S.J. acknowl- edges funding by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the Ramón y Cajal Grant Reference RYC2020-029993-I. 
D.D.L. worked under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and was funded by a UC-National Lab Collaborative Research and Training Awards on Mitigating and Managing Extreme Wildfire Risk in California (grant LFR-20-652467). A.A. acknowledges funding by the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture Grant 2021-67022-35908. I.C. was supported by the La Caixa Foundation (Junior Leader Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 847648).},
publisher = {National Academy of Sciences},
publisher = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023, 120 (25), e2213815120},
title = {Anthropogenic climate change impacts exacerbate summer forest fires in California},
author = {Turco, Marco and Abatzogloub, John T. and Herrera García, Sixto and Zhuangd, Yizhou and Jerez, Sonia and Lucas, Donald D. and AghaKouchak, Amir and Cvijanovic, Ivana},
}