Lack of Clouds Can Effect Wildfires?

Southern California's wildfires are posing a growing risk, as the Sunshine State threatens to become too sunny for its own good. In many southern coastal areas, rising summer temperatures caused by spreading urbanization and the warming climate are driving off formerly common low-lying morning clouds and increasing the prospect of worse wildfires, U.S. scientists say.

Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is lead author of their study. "Cloud cover is plummeting in southern coastal California," he said. "And as clouds decrease, that increases the chance of bigger and more intense fires." This conclusion reinforces earlier research which found that low-level clouds could help to cause some cooling.