As Clark University Geography Professor Abby Frazier flew back to Boston from Honolulu after six weeks of climate research in the Hawai‘ian islands, deadly wildfires swept through Maui. Landing at Logan the morning of Aug. 10, she and other passengers were met by local TV crews seeking to interview witnesses to the fire that killed over 100 people, left 1,000 missing, and wiped out the historic town of Lahaina.

Although Frazier didn’t experience the fires or talk to the media at the airport, she did weigh in with CNN and Anderson Cooper 360, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, BBC Radio, and others about a topic she knows well: the changing climate conditions — notably, variable rainfall patterns and drought — that are contributing to devastating events like those in Maui.

A seasoned climatologist, Frazier is leading the Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, mandated every four years by Congress and set to be released by the end of 2023.

This summer, she traveled to Hawai‘i to conduct National Science Foundation-supported research, working on a project with the Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange, which is supported by the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center (PICASC) and NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).

Frazier and her colleagues checked on the 30 Hawai‘i Mesonet climate stations they have installed around the islands, with 70 more to go. The weather station data feeds into a climate data portal, providing temperature and rainfall totals to researchers, policymakers, and the public.

“It’s so critically important, especially given all of the climate challenges that we have, to help get the best available data out there for people so that they can make decisions,” she says.

Frazier has more than a decade of conducting research and living in Hawai‘i, first as a graduate student at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and then as a postdoctoral research geographer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry and research fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Yet even she was struck by the intensity of the fires in Maui, where she has worked over the years with other researchers, national park officials, and land managers on drought issues. The Lahaina fire has been deemed the deadliest fire in the U.S. in more than a century.

“Seeing such a historic town completely burnt to the ground is so overwhelmingly sad and heartbreaking,” she says. “A lot of these fires have been happening up on the hillside and not so close to town and to people. But not this one. It was really hard to watch. My heart goes out to all these communities affected by it.”

The role of El Niño in drought

Although many mainlanders think of Hawai‘i as boasting lush, tropical landscapes, the reality is that the state faces significant drought-like conditions and an increasing number of wildfires, according to Frazier.

“People are not aware how bad fire can be in Hawai‘i. In some years, the percent area burned is higher than what you have in the Western U.S.,” she says. “And it’s even higher when you head out to the Western Pacific, like Guam — they’ve had years where 10 percent of the island burns in a year with an El Niño” climate pattern.

Ironically, when Frazier was in Hawai‘i, she also was working on a paper about compound climate extremes — events that happen back-to-back, resulting in significant flooding, drought, or wildfires. She is exploring “what kinds of extra impacts those have as opposed to just getting any one event by itself.” Beyond the physical impacts, “we are looking at socioeconomic factors as well, and how badly these events impact communities.” Her research is supported by Pacific RISA, a NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnership.

The fire that struck Lahaina stemmed from this combination of climate extremes, most notably El Niño, “one of the biggest drivers of drought across Hawai‘i,” she says.

“El Niño affects tropical cyclones, it affects sea level, and it affects the wildfire season,” Frazier says. “We get heavy rainfall one time of the year and then we get drought in the winter. And that dries out all the fuels [such as grasses]. And then we get a much earlier and bigger wildfire season, which is definitely problematic.”

Also contributing to the Lahaina fire were the more than 80-mile-per-hour winds from Category 4 Hurricane Dora, passing just south of Maui, which fanned the flames, she adds, “and a high-pressure system to the north that brought in high winds and very low humidity — just these perfect conditions for fire, on top of the drought they’ve been experiencing for the last month. About a third of Maui counties are in moderate drought or worse.”

Where climate change comes into play

Scientists are trying to understand how much climate change played a part in the Lahaina fire, according to Frazier.

“There’s likely a climate change signal in everything we see,”  she told the New York Times. “All of this is happening on a background of increased temperatures and drying. We’ve seen long-term trends that have pointed to things getting drier in Hawai‘i, and droughts getting worse.”

Drying grasses create fuel for the fire

Fueling the Lahaina fire were dried-out invasive grasses covering former plantation lands, once home to fields of sugar cane and pineapple. “The grasses are one of the biggest factors contributing to this particular fire,” according to Frazier.

“It’s a very clear story of shifting agriculture and shifting management of these lands that formally had more staff and, and people around. And now it’s just the firefighters — the only ones left to manage these big fires,” she adds. “Understanding how climate change is going to shift the distribution of these grasses is a really a big question. It’s absolutely a compounding hazard when we think about climate change in Hawai‘i.”

Raising awareness and taking action

Frazier hopes that the devastation of the Lahaina fire will raise awareness and encourage policymakers to take wildfire prevention more seriously.

“We can actually manage one of the main causes of the fires — the grasses. We can build fire fuel breaks and allow for more cattle grazing to bring down those grasses to reduce risk,” she says.

Back in 2022, she noted that using more sustainable water systems and fixing leaks in water transport infrastructures could also help build resilience.

“My colleagues and I have been saying the same things for years, and the advice is still the same,” she says. “It hasn’t changed.”

In a Sustainability journal article published last August with support from the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center, lead author Frazier and her colleagues examined the scope and impact of drought in Hawaiʻi over the past century. “Droughts have resulted in over $80 million in agricultural relief since 1996 and have increased wildfire risk, especially during El Niño years,” they said. “Efforts to anticipate and then mitigate the effects of drought require knowledge of historical drought characteristics and clearly understood definitions of drought.”

Still, when Frazier and her colleagues publish the National Climate Assessment this fall, they will aim to offer messages of hope, she emphasizes, not the “doom and gloom” to which many have become accustomed.

“I think it’s much more helpful to say, what are people actually doing to build resilience and adapt to the changes we know are happening, and that we know are going to keep happening? What can we do about it?”