Energetically extreme fires have a huge impact on the Earth system, releasing huge plumes of smoke into the atmosphere comparable to volcanic eruptions. They release vast stores of carbon and cause severe damage to ecosystems and societies, sometimes destroying entire cities or suburbs. A new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution has tracked the rapid increase in energetically extreme wildfires across the planet over the past two decades.
The analysis looked at 88 million observations of wildfires from NASA’s MODIS satellites. These satellites fly overhead several times a day. They record fires and the energy they release — known as fire radiant power.
Using this 21-year dataset, energetically extreme fires, defined as the top 0.01% of fire radiative power, were identified. But there has been a strong upward trend in extreme fires over the past two decades, with their frequency and intensity more than doubling from 2003 to 2023.
The last seven years have included the six most extreme in the 21-year period. This increase has occurred in tandem with global warming, with 2023 breaking temperature records and also having the most intense fires.
The fastest growth has been in the temperate coniferous forests and carbon-rich boreal forests of the northern hemisphere. Recent fires there have released vast amounts of smoke and carbon, threatening to amplify warming. Last year, extreme fires in Canada blanketed tens of millions of people in the eastern United States in smoke. The fires have led to hazardous air quality, a bigger killer than the flames themselves.
Although the frequency of extreme fires increased both during the day and at night, the rate of increase was fastest at night. The increase in nighttime fires is significant because increased humidity at night typically slows the spread of fire. This trend means that firefighters get less respite at night.
Australia was the main site of intense fire activity during the devastating Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20. They coincided with a period of record heat and drought. The area burned in 2023 in northern Australia is even larger than the Black Summer bushfires. These recent fires in drought-stricken Australia occurred a year after heavy rains and abundant grass growth. When grass dries out, it provides fuel reserves that allow very large fires to form.
There is little doubt that climate change is contributing to the global increase in extreme fires. Climate change causes the air above the ground to become drier, which in turn makes fuels drier, allowing for more complete combustion. This also leads to longer summers and worse fire conditions.
Last year was 1.48°C hotter than pre-industrial levels, giving us an idea of what a typical year of 1.5°C warming (the target limit under the Paris Agreement) might look like. The way we manage ecosystems is also likely to play a major role in the increase in extreme fires.
In particular, years of suppressing almost all fires has led to a buildup of fuel in some ecosystems. Trying to suppress all fires paradoxically predisposes forests to burning under the worst conditions. Fire suppression becomes impossible, leading to very large fires.
The summer of 2023 has been unusually warm around the world. Areas that don’t typically have wildfires, like Maui, are feeling the effects of global warming. Active, very large wildfires are currently burning in Greece, Spain, and British Columbia.
Fire is an integral part of nature and the health of fire-adapted ecosystems depends on it. Fire management must be adapted to sustainably live alongside it in hot climates. A key part of fire management in hot climates must include ecosystem management to prevent fires from becoming too hot.
For thousands of years, Indigenous Australians have skillfully cultivated low-intensity fire regimes. They did this through frequent use of fire, finely tuned to the local ecosystem.
But reintroducing low-intensity fire into ecosystems that have accumulated large fuel stores from long-term fire suppression is not always easy. Some new techniques, such as mechanical thinning, show promise in helping to reintroduce fire into overgrown situations on the edges of bushland and cities. When combined with controlled fire, mechanical thinning can help reduce the risk of overgrown vegetation catching fire and allow cooler fire regimes to be used again.
In Yakutia, at the end of April 2024, residents were evacuated due to forest fires. The difficult situation with forest fires persisted for a long time in the summer in the Sakha Republic, where some fires came close to populated areas, forcing the authorities to begin evacuating their residents. As reported by the Telegram channel of the head of the Verkhnevilyuysky district, children, people with disabilities and pregnant women were evacuated from the village of Orgeta, where the forest fire approached to a distance of about 6 kilometers. In total, more than 550 people live in the village of Orgeta.
The forest fire area was about 6 thousand hectares. 47 people and 5 units of equipment worked to extinguish it. In turn, according to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia, in the same Verkhnevilyuysky District, 10 kilometers from the village of Byrakan, another large fire was active with an area of more than 10 thousand hectares. 123 people and 21 units of equipment were involved in extinguishing the fire.
There were 13,489 forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon in the first half of 2024, the worst in two decades, according to satellite data.
The total number of fires has increased by more than 61% compared to the same period last year, which experts attribute to the historic drought that hit the world’s largest tropical forest last year.
According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), since records began in 1998, only two years have had more fires from January to June: 2003 (17,143) and 2004 (17,340).
The data poses a serious challenge to the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, despite a decline in deforestation in the Amazon, which helps reduce global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide. According to INPE, the area affected by deforestation has decreased by 42% from January 1 to June 21 compared to the same period in 2023. Recall that Lula promised to end illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030.
But as for wildfires, they also set records for the January-June period in two other biological ecosystems south of the Amazon: the Pantanal, one of the world’s largest tropical wetlands, and the Cerrado savanna, which is mostly located in Brazil.
The Pantanal, home to millions of caimans, parrots, giant otters and the highest density of jaguars in the world, recorded 3,538 wildfires in the first six months of 2024 – an increase of more than 2,000% compared to last year.
The total number of fires also increased by 40% compared to 2020, a record year for the region.
In June alone, 2,639 fires were recorded, six times the highest number ever recorded. In recent days, residents of the Pantanal have seen red skies and plumes of smoke from the fires.
The situation is worrying because the peak of the fire season usually occurs in the second half of the year, especially September, when the weather is driest.
Mato Grosso state, where much of the Pantanal is located, declared a state of emergency last week, and authorities said firefighters would be sent from other regions to battle the blaze.
The Cerrado savanna, one of the three largest savannas on Earth along with Africa and Australia, recorded 13,229 fires from January to June, almost as many as the Amazon. The Cerrado covers an area the size of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK combined.
Massive wildfires devastating Canada in July 2024 are captured on satellite images. Thousands of people were evacuated from Jasper National Park in Alberta, California.
Fast-moving wildfires continued to rage across western Canada, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-R satellites to monitor fires and smoke plumes around the clock.
On July 24, thousands of residents and tourists were evacuated in Jasper National Park, the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, as massive fires swept through the southern portion of the community. According to the Associated Press, there were “significant losses” in the area, as structures were burned to the ground and other nearby towns were also forced to flee. These fires began on July 22, following a significant fire that also occurred in Western Canada on May 10; that fire in British Columbia grew and burned more than 13,000 acres in just three days.
Firefighters, forecasters, and community leaders rely on satellites to provide broader coverage of fire and smoke movements; they use images from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on board each of the GOES-R satellites to help with these monitoring needs. Using different spectral bands, the wavelengths from the channels of each of these instruments can capture smoke signals and identify hot spots during a wildfire, pinpoint the locations of those signals, and create powerful images to paint a picture in near real time of the growth and/or decay of each event.
California wildfires have burned far more land in 2024 than in 2023. About 20 times more acres have burned during California’s wildfire season this year than at this time last year.
Statewide, more than 3,500 wildfires have burned about 207,000 acres since the start of the year through early July. About 10,000 acres had burned around this time last year. The five-year average for acres burned through mid-July is about 39,000, Cal Fire said.
“We’re not just in a fire season, we’re in a fire year,” Joe Tyler, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), said at a news conference in early July.
Tyler said Cal Fire and its partners are “fully equipped” with fire trucks, bulldozers and newly introduced Blackhawk helicopters that can fly at night.
As part of its 2024 budget, California will allocate $2.6 billion through 2028 to fight wildfires and improve forest health, in addition to $200 million annually for fire prevention. To help with staffing, workweeks for state firefighters will be shortened, and the state has set a goal of hiring about 2,400 more firefighters over the next five years.
More than 95 percent of wildfires are started by people, Tyler said. He warned Californians to be careful when doing things that can create sparks, such as mowing lawns, towing vehicles, welding and firing guns.
A firefighter runs while battling the Thompson Fire in Oroville, Calif. Noah Berger/AP
In hot, dry and windy conditions, as California has seen, sparks can flare into flames. Gov. Gavin Newsom has also blamed record-breaking temperatures and lightning strikes as the sources of some of the fires.
“Climate change is real… If you don’t believe the science, you’re going to have to believe your own eyes, the lived experience that we all have here in the western United States and around the world,” he said.