In the era when American cities regularly caught fire, the widespread destruction seeded what looks, in retrospect, like possibility.

The Los Angeles fires are a soul-crushing and city-defining disaster. Callous voices have called it a city-destroying event, but they don’t know Los Angeles very well.

The analysis by the World Weather Attribution's climate scientists links the fires that broke out on January 7 to man-made climate change, which has extended the fire-prone conditions by an additional 23 days each year in California.