The wildfires raging through Southern California neighborhoods from the Pacific Palisades to Pasadena are horrifying and tragic. I feel profound sadness for my friends who have lost homes and businesses. My own connection to the Palisades neighborhood began twelve years ago almost to the day, when in my first act as a Los Angeles public official, I joined the Department of Water and Power to inaugurate a solar installation at the Palisades Pit Stop car wash subsidized by the city. That car wash now appears to be within the active fire zone. A climate realism approach can help us better understand the causes of this devastation.

Although these wildfires have intensely local effects, they are attributable, at least to a small degree, to global climate change caused by the greenhouse gas emissions of major economies around the world.

The California wildfires offer a concrete example for how to apply an approach I call climate realism to understanding the threat of climate change to U.S. interests and adopting a pragmatic stance in response. Here are five ways to contextualize the unfolding tragedy through the lens of climate realism.

Climate Realism: Perilous Levels of Climate Change This Century Are Inevitable

Climate realism starts by acknowledging the hard reality that the world is virtually certain to miss climate targets such as limiting global warming above preindustrial levels to 2⁰C (3.6⁰F) by century-end or achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions close to midcentury. The United States should prepare for the most likely outcome, which currently includes average warming in excess of 3⁰C (5.4⁰F) by century-end. U.S. wildfire intensity will continue to rise as a result of climate change — alongside other impacts from droughts to heat waves to intense hurricanes.

Already today, Los Angeles is roughly 3⁰C warmer than preindustrial levels — double the global average warming — increasing the risk of hot and dry conditions conducive to wildfires. By midcentury, using a climate realism approach, climate change could make California wildfires more than 7 percent more intense, and by the year 2100, that figure could multiply dramatically. Although some studies forecast Santa Ana winds reducing in intensity during some parts of the year, the net effect of climate change on Southern California wildfires owing to winter wind speeds and hotter and drier conditions is still unclear.

Read the full article about climate realism by Varun Sivaram at Council on Foreign Relations.