STORY: :: Location: San Diego, California

:: Date: June 18, 2024

:: Geoscientist says 15,000 acre Post Fire

a result of 'extreme climate, winds and low humidity'

:: Neal Discroll

Geoscientist

The University of California San Diego

:: "Yeah, so I understand that the Post Fire is about 15,000 acres now and it's about 20 to 25% contained. And the firefighters are, there's a lot of firefighters fighting the perimeter with air attacks, and they're trying to keep this fire small, so that we can fight it in the incipient phase and not have it get turned into a mega fire."

:: "These high pressure domes, sit over the West and the associated winds and low humidity are drying out the fuels. And so we're starting to see fires occur and we're, we're moving into heightened fire season. And it's not clear if this is going to be worse or better than previous years."

:: "Here, what we like to refer to it as extreme climate. So we're heating up the atmosphere and ocean, and they want to get rid of that heat through tornadic activity, hurricanes, things like this. So, so here, as we're heating up the planet, we're conducting a huge experiment of how that's going to impact the polar vortex or El Nino or La Nina or Pacific Decadal Oscillation - all these weather forcing functions that impact the western United States. And we just don't have enough data yet to understand how the heightened, temperatures of the atmosphere and ocean are going to impact firefighting, coral reef die-off, things like this. So, atmospheric rivers, they're dumping a whole year of rain in areas like in Libya overnight. So we're in a time of extreme climate, and we're collecting data to see how heating up the ocean and atmosphere is going to impact the planet."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration pointed to a recent report indicating California's Post Fire had burned more than 15,600 acres and was only 20% contained, according to the agency's post on the social media platform X Tuesday (June 18) showing smoke from satellite imagery.

Geoscientist Neal Driscoll, a professor of geology and geophysics at University of California San Diego, said scientists are still analyzing how rising temperatures in the atmosphere and ocean are impacting wildfires in the state.

LA County Fire Department said that efforts to contain the wildfire are being hampered by high temperatures, low humidity and strong winds.