CLIMATE CHANGE & DISASTERSClimate Change Is Turning Global Wildfires into Monsters
Predicting bushfires is difficult at the best of times. But as climate change wreaks havoc with our world’s weather systems it’s getting harder and more important to get right. And the behavior of wildfires worldwide over the last year has shown us just how unpredictable and devastating these fires have become.
Predicting bushfires is difficult at the best of times. But as climate change wreaks havoc with our world’s weather systems it’s getting harder and more important to get right.
And the behavior of wildfires worldwide over the last year has shown us just how unpredictable and devastating these fires have become.
The second annual State of Wildfires report, which is published annually in the journal Earth System Science Data, is led by a team in the United Kingdom and features contributors from every fire-prone continent on Earth. And this includes us—as Australian co-authors and contributors.
And it reveals a stark picture of our world’s 2024–25 fire season.
An area larger than India—totaling 3.7 million square kilometers—was scorched by wildfires globally. These fires affected 100 million people and put around $US215 billion worth of homes and infrastructure at risk.
According to Dr. Douglas Kelley, from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and co-lead of the report, our reports are building unequivocal evidence of how climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme wildfires.
The Smoking Gun
The report’s findings for the period March 2024 to February 2025 are alarming.
Climate change made wildfires in the Pantanal-Chiquitano region of South America 35 times larger.
If we look at Southern California’s deadly fires—they were twice as likely and 25 times larger, in terms of burned area, in the current climate than they would have been in a world with no human-caused global warming.
And the record-breaking fires that ravaged parts of the Amazon and Congo were accelerated by climate change but also contributed to it—releasing billions of tonnes of CO₂.
According to Dr. Francesca Di Giuseppe from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and report co-lead, climate change is not only creating more dangerous fire-prone weather conditions, but it is also influencing the rates at which vegetation grows and provides fuel for the fires to spread.
Using satellite observations as well as advanced modeling to identify and investigate the causes of wildfires from the last fire season, our team of international scientists investigated the role that climate and land use change played.
The devastating fires in Los Angeles in January 2025 that caused 30 deaths, forced 150,000 evacuations, destroyed at least 11,500 homes and resulted in economic losses totaling $US140 billion are a case in point.
Our analysis highlights the critical role of both extreme weather and fuel in the Los Angeles fires, with unusually wet weather in the preceding 30 months contributing to strong vegetation growth and laying the perfect foundations for wildfires to occur when unusually hot and dry conditions arrived in January.
The amount and dryness of vegetation also played a critical role during the extreme wildfires in Amazonia and Congo, where abnormally dry forests and wetlands allowed fires to spread faster and further.
And if we look at emissions from wildfires, Canada saw its second consecutive year of wildfire CO₂emissions exceeding a billion tonnes, while Bolivia had its highest CO₂emissions total this century, as did several states across South America.
Hamish Clarke is Senior Research Fellow, Future Fire Risk, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne. Sarah Harris is Manager, Research and Development, Country Fire Authority (CFA). The article was originally posted to the website of the University of Melbourne.
