Warming world means fires ignite ‘more explosively’Otto’s team calculated how much climate change — from the burning of coal, oil and gas — increased the chances for fires of this intensity to happen. And we’ve known for decades that extreme heat and drought are becoming more common due to anthropogenic climate change. But then things quickly got worse fast because climate change overwhelmed that improvement, he said. University of California Merced fire scientist John Abatzaglou, who also wasn’t part of either research, said, “these findings make clear that climate change is not just a future problem, it’s already here.” And that will mean that these fire weather conditions will get worse and worse and worse.