Climate change helped make California a tinder box for its record-setting wildfires

In all likelihood, it’s a scenario that climate change helped to create, according to Daniel Swain, a researcher at University of California-Los Angeles’ Center for Climate Science. In a detailed thread on Twitter, Swain walked through the conditions that contributed to the fires now burning across the state, and the research showing how climate change made them possible.

His analysis offers sobering view of the role global warming can play in such disasters—”a calm and comprehensive scientific account of why climate change makes fires like the ones now shrouding California more likely and more hellish,” according to renowned environmental activist Bill McKibben.