daniel swain, thanks for explaining that.e returning to our coverage of those huge fires in l.a. in the next few minutes. politicians across europe and the united states have been reacting after u.s. president elect donald trump refused to rule out using military force to seize greenland which is controlled by denmark. trump reiterated his desire to make it a part of the united states. the u.s. secretary of state gave this reaction. >> the idea about greenland is obviously not a good one. more important, it is one that is not going to happen, so we shouldn't waste a lot of time talking about it. annita: joining us now on "the context," is the senior analyst from the woodrow wilson center of scholars. great to have you here. why has greenland been catapulted into the headlines the way that it has? >> thank you for having me. the interest in greenland is really focused around two things, and that is security and economics. though seem to be the two major drivers of the trump administration's interest in that. i think there it i

doctor daniel swain with ucla. we appreciate your time and expertise.hanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> again, our live reporting continues on abc seven news at four, five and 6 p.m. get those live updates anytime at abc seven news.com. and by downloading the abc seven news bay area app. okay, let's get you to our other big story back here at home. daniel lurie is officially san francisco's 46th mayor after being sworn sworn in on the steps of city hall. jesse peterson, who has known lurie and his family for more than a decade and works in the state's public defender's office, administered that oath of office. >> i, daniel lurie, do solemnly swear during such time as i hold the office, during such time as i hold the office as mayor and city of san francisco as mayor and city of san francisco. >> congratulations. thank you. >> during his inauguration speech, mayor lurie said his top priorities are fixing the fentanyl crisis, helping the homeless, keeping downtown streets safe, and balancing the city's budget deficit. >> it is the greatest

daniel swain and his group of researchers out of ucla and originally stanford published this paper today. the timing is uncanny. if we leave behind the paper that they published and switch back to the weather computer, just a review on how this went this winter, we've shown you that. the red shows where we're record dry. this was last winter and this was the winter before that. if we come on in for a close-up look at l.a., 0 percent average rainfall this winter. last year numbers were 190% and the year before up 240%. so swinging wildly from one extreme to the next is the hallmark that we should be thinking about. sure, this was a big wind event, but the winds were only the last little element of this. it was really the preceding two winters that set us up for the fires that california is now seeing and the paper tells us as we go ahead over the next several decades of warming, we're likely going to be seeing that whiplash become more intense. that's kind of like the simple takeaway. we'll talk about this again in a little more detail during the 5:30 newscast. i'll be back with our forec

coincidence of what is probably fortunate timing to catch all of our attention, a paper came out today, daniel swain, one of the leading climate researchers, started at stanford, went to ucla, now works at the centers for atmospheric research. he coined the phrase weather whiplash to clue us all in to what the most obvious impact climate change will have on california's weather and that's swinging back between bigger extremes, deeper droughts and bigger rains when they come. think about what this did in southern california. two years of huge rain. the brush took off. the grasses really grew. then we enter a year where we had pretty intense heat this summer down there, baked all that stuff and now that stuff never got watered. so it's just sitting there. the winds are strong enough and they're like the last little piece of this puzzle, but it really is the preceding three winters that put us in this situation. let me show you another retrospective on this. we'll go to the weather computer and i'll switch the vantage point. if we're looking on the virtual map this year showing us how dry we are, that'

daniel swain is joining us now. e's a climate scientist at the ucla institute of environment and sustainability. daniel, thanks so much for being here. it's so important to have this conversation right now. i know you talk about hydroclimate whiplash. what is that? help people understand what that is and how it's contributing to what's happening right now. >> well, thanks for having me back. you know, in general, hydroclimate whiplash is this is this overall notion of rapid swings between very dry conditions, on the one hand, and very wet conditions on the other, or or vice versa, as is the case here, as you mentioned in southern california, where last winter was exceptionally wet, which then ultimately resulted in a lot of growth of additional grass and brush, the kind of vegetation that's burning in the fires this week. >> and now we're experiencing a record dry period. witth start of the rainy season being delayed indefinitely. it hasn't rained in los angeles essentially since may. so now what we have is, on the o

. >> doctor daniel swain is a ucla climate scientist who shows in a graphic that the coming rains could be meaningless. >> i think this period will very likely be a period of greatly reduced fire risk. once we get back to the end of the first week in february, though, unless it rains again, we're going to be at the mercy of the winds, because all it will take is one santa ana event to evaporate all of this water. and we'll be right back to where we started. >> usc economist adam rose is a renowned risk analysis expert for disasters ranging from terrorist attacks to weather and wildfires. >> if you look ahead, while this was unprecedented, this is not necessarily the worst of these types of events that will happen in the future. there are very likely to be even worse conditions. >> given the winds. it's possible every fire engine in the state could not have prevented mass destruction. tom vacar ktvu, fox two news. >> all right. i'm here with ktvu meteorologist mark tamayo, and the good news is quite a bit of rain. they haven't really had measurable rain since, what, april? something like

joining me is daniel swain, climate scientist at ucla. thank you for joining us.nderstand the relationship between climate change and what we are seeing, the situation that we are seeing in california right now. >> thanks for having me. we know the winter into the autumn are the kind of year when southern california does tend to see the strong, dry offshore winds like we are experiencing now. this is a particularly extreme episode. the underlying precondition that relates most to climate and climate change is the level of vegetation and landscape scale dryness heading into this wind event, which was highly anomalous, even record-breaking levels. this has been an unusually warm and record dry stretch for southern california in the weeks and months leading up to this fire, which comes on the heels of two very wet years. the sequence of events, from what to extremely trying allowed a lot of additional grass and brush to grow in the fire zones during the wet time and the record want and dryness since that point has to write it out to levels that we are seeing reflecte

for axios ucla climate scientist daniel swain referred to the high winds as an atmospheric blow dryer for its effects on trees and other vegetation. joining me now is jacob soboroff, nbc news political and national correspondent, who's on the ground in pacific palisades per go and please just give us a sense of what is happening, and is there anything left at this point of pacific palisades, jacob? >> joy, i'm sorry to be so emotional about it but the truth is, this is the community that i grew up in, and that i was born and raised in, and the answer is no, not really. this is a really, really amazing, special place. 100,000, excuse me, 23,000 people live here and i am, until i was 18 years old, grew up in this neighborhood. this is the methodist church in town and it just seems like building after building continues to go up, joy. what i want to say about it is, is this set of circumstances that are so unprecedented that i don't think any of us would've ever possibly imagined this would happen here. i have said a couple times today that when you think of damage like this, and you clo

daniel swain. lee zeldin. sweet and. lovely like. religious isa soares mark carney. roman busargin kristen clarke vincennes. kurakhove three naval officer srinivasan one. in one. three. jamie raskin and. jimmy carter. song. mark rutte one. of one. has sold as bayless. is one. and. proudly by. play. seven. s. e. cupp and khan younis. starlink wi-fi natacha ben haÏm sh. >> all right. a very moving funeral. state funeral for president jimmy carter. we just saw president biden greeting prince edward and canadian prime minister justin trudeau. we saw former president bush shaking hands with president elect. trump. there is vice president mike pence and vice president al gore. interesting moment that pence told gore that when he decided to follow the constitution and preside over the awarding of the electoral votes to joe biden back in january 2021, it was al gore who he took some inspiration from. al gore, who presided over the counting of the electoral votes in his own defeat. despite many members of the house objecting, and gore said to him, that means more to me than y

. >> doctor daniel swain is a ucla climate scientist who shows in a graphic that the coming rains could be meaningless. >> i think this period will very likely be a period of greatly reduced fire risk. once we get back to the end of the first week in february, though, unless it rains again, we're going to be at the mercy of the winds, because all it will take is one santa ana event to evaporate all of this water. and we'll be right back to where we started. >> usc economist adam rose is a renowned risk analysis expert for disasters ranging from terrorist attacks to weather and wildfires. >> if you look ahead, while this was unprecedented, this is not necessarily the worst of these types of events that will happen in the future. there are very likely to be even worse conditions. >> given the winds. it's possible every fire engine in the state could not have prevented mass destruction. tom vacar ktvu, fox two news. >> president trump is scheduled to visit areas devastated by the wildfires in southern california amid his threats to withhold aid for california. so far, we don't have a lot o

. >> doctor daniel swain is a ucla climate scientist who shows in a graphic that the coming rains could be meaningless. >> i think this period will very likely be a period of greatly reduced fire risk. once we get back to the end of the first week in february, though, unless it rains again, we're going to be at the mercy of the winds, because all it will take is one santa ana event to evaporate all of this water. and we'll be right back to where we started. >> usc economist adam rose is a renowned risk analysis expert for disasters ranging from terrorist attacks to weather and wildfires. >> if you look ahead, while this was unprecedented, this is not necessarily the worst of these types of events that will happen in the future. there are very likely to be even worse conditions. >> and in case you haven't noticed, we really haven't had too much rain here in the golden state northern part. and that can be a very big problem because we've had a couple of years where we had massive rains in december and early january, only to see it fizzle away. in fact, one year it ended up at 37% of norma

. >> doctor daniel swain is a ucla climate scientist who shows in a graphic that the coming rains could be meaningless. >> i think this period will very likely be a period of greatly reduced fire risk. once we get back to the end of the first week in february, though, unless it rains again, we're going to be at the mercy of the winds, because all it will take is one santa ana event to evaporate all of this water. and we'll be right back to where we started. >> usc economist adam rose is a renowned risk analysis expert for disasters ranging from terrorist attacks to weather and wildfires. >> if you look ahead, while this was unprecedented, this is not necessarily the worst of these types of events that will happen in the future. there are very likely to be even worse conditions. >> now getting real, given the way the winds were. it is very possible that if every fire engine in the state was on site, they could not have prevented the mass destruction that we saw. yes, it was that bad. the winds were that strong. back to you. >> all right. tom vacar in our newsroom. tom, thank you for that