Five of the ten largest wildfires in modern California history broke out in 2020. In 2021, massive fires called Kaldor, Dixie, and the River Complex erupted again, charring tens of thousands of square kilometers of forest and bushland and causing billions of dollars in economic damage. American. These fires were favored by the persistent drought in the western United States, which was only mitigated by heavy rain in parts of California in mid-October. The frequent occurrence of severe droughts and severe fire conditions in the region could in turn be related to the shrinking of the Arctic ice, Yufei Zhou of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and his team concludes at Nature Communications..