Extreme forest fires have doubled in the past twenty years worldwide due to global warming

According to a study published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution”, their frequency increased 2.2-fold between 2003 and 2023.

The number and intensity of extreme wildfires, the most destructive and polluting, have more than doubled worldwide over the past 20 years, due to global warming caused by human activity, according to a new study published Monday June 24 in the newspaper Nature Ecology & Evolution. Using satellite data, researchers studied nearly 3,000 wildfires with enormous “radiative power” – the amount of energy emitted by radiation – between 2003 and 2023 and found that their frequency had increased by 2.2 during this period.

It is the temperate coniferous forests, particularly in the western United States, and the boreal forests, which cover Alaska, northern Canada and Russia, which are the most affected, with a frequency of such fires multiplied respectively by 11 and 7. Considering only the 20 most violent fires of each year, their cumulative radiative power has also more than doubled, at a rate which “seems to be accelerating.”

“I expected an increase, but this rate of increase alarmed me”said the lead author of this work, Calum Cunningham, of the Australian University of Tasmania. “The effects of climate change are no longer a thing of the future and we are now seeing signs of a drying and warming atmosphere”he told AFP, pleading for better preventive management of forests.

These extreme fires are fueled by increasingly severe drought, a consequence of global warming. During its growth, the forest cover absorbs CO2, but it returns en masse to the atmosphere when the vegetation burns, aggravating global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.