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We feel like we’re getting used to the fact that the Earth is burning. Lately, over 70 forest fires simultaneously burned in Greece. In early 2024, Chile experienced its worst fire season on record, with more than 130 people died. Last year, record-breaking wildfires raged in Canada from March to November, and in August, flames devastated the island of Maui in Hawaii. And the list goes on.
Watching the news, it certainly seems like catastrophic, extreme wildfires are happening more and more often, and unfortunately that feeling has now been confirmed to be true. new study Published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the number and intensity of the most extreme fires on Earth have doubled in the past two decades.
The authors of the up-to-date study, scientists from the University of Tasmania, first calculated the energy released by different fires over a 21-year period from 2003 to 2023. They did this using satellite sensor which can identify heat from fires by measuring the energy released as “radiant fire power.”
The researchers identified a total of 30 million wildfires (technically 30 million “fire events,” which can include clusters of fires grouped together). They then selected the 2,913 with the most energy released, or the 0.01 percent “most extreme” wildfires. Their work shows that these extreme wildfires are becoming increasingly common, with their number doubling over the past two decades. Since 2017, Earth has experienced six of the most extreme wildfire years (all years except 2022).
Importantly, these extreme wildfires are becoming more intense. Those classified as extreme in recent years have released twice as much energy as those classified as extreme at the beginning of the study period.
These results are consistent with other recent evidence that wildfires are increasing. For example, the area of forest burned each year is slightly increasing, leading to a corresponding increase in carbon dioxide emissions in forests. (The total area of land burned each year is decreasing(due to the reduction in the number of grassland and arable land fires, but these fires are less intense and emit less carbon dioxide than forest fires.)
Burn degree—a measure of how much damage a fire causes to an ecosystem—is also worsening in many regions, and the percentage of burned land affected by intense fire is also rising around the world.
Courtesy of Victor Fernandez Garcia