Fewer Clouds Over Malibu = Drier Foilage = More Fires, UCSB Study Finds
Written by 991KBU on June 14, 2018
A new study from the University of California Santa Barbara says the Los Angeles area is getting less clouds because of an urban heat island.
Researchers used cloud measurements taken every fifteen minutes from airports throughout Southern California.
They found statistically significant decreases in cloud cover … decreases of 46 percent at the Santa Monica Airport …and 56 percent less cloudy in Burbank.
And the fewer clouds maybe why were having fires in the spring and early summer.
“Cloud cover is plummeting in southern coastal California,” says Park Williams … a U-C Santa Barbara researcher.
“And as the clouds decrease, that increases the chances of bigger and more intense fires.”
A meteorologist at the National Weather Service station in Oxnard, said that the findings made a lot of sense.
The study was published last week in the Geophysical Research Letters journal.
It found that decreased cloud cover in summers mean that plants lose a higher percentage of their moisture to the atmosphere, making them more likely to burn if exposed to fire.
The last big fire in the Malibu area … the 2103 Springs Fire …. burned over 25,000 acres in a little more than a day.
That was in May … what used to be considered a drizzly month.
