Pollution and choking smoke increased the climate crisis, which navigates global heating and droughts, leading to vigorous wildfires.
Human-induced pollution escalated extreme climatic changes, resulting in strong wildfires. This brushfire everywhere, turning life into a total chaos for millions (1✔ ✔Trusted Source
State of Wildfires 2024-2025
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In Los Angeles, there are fires twice as likely and 25 times larger. In South America’s Pantanal-Chiquitano region, fires had blown up to 35 times bigger than their usual size.
Unprecedented conflagration seized even the Amazon and Congo. To save our forests, people, towns, animals, economies, and ecosystems, immediate action should spring up now.
However, it is still too early to tell how much climate change contributed to the impacts of the wildfires.
New Report Warns: Wildfires Now a Major Global Threat
The new report warns that more severe heatwaves and droughts are making extreme wildfires more frequent and intense worldwide, resulting in increasing threats to people’s lives – through fire and polluting smoke – as well as property, economies and the environment.
The second annual State of Wildfires report has been co-led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the UK Met Office, the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
The scientists used satellite observations as well as advanced modelling to identify and investigate the causes of wildfires from the last fire season (March 2024-February 2025) and the role that climate and land use change played.
Wildfires Expose Deaths, Evacuations, and Billions in Losses
UKCEH land surface modeler Dr. Douglas Kelley, who co-led this year’s report, said: “Our annual reports are building unequivocal evidence of how climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme wildfires. Without human-driven warming, many of these wildfires, in Pantanal and Southern California, for example, would not have been on an extreme scale.”
Summary of Extreme Fire Season
- A total of 3.7 million km2 – an area larger than India – was burned by wildfires globally in 2024-25.
- 100 million people and US $215 billion worth of homes and infrastructure were exposed to wildfire (i.e. were in the vicinity of fires).
- Emissions from fires reached over eight billion tonnes of CO2 – around 10% above the average since 2003 – driven by unusually large and intense forest fires in South America and Canada.
- The wildfires in Los Angeles in January 2025 caused 30 deaths, forced 150,000 evacuations, destroyed at least 11,500 homes and resulted in economic losses totaling $140 billion.
- Canada saw its second successive year of CO2 emissions over a billion tons, with wildfires in Jasper National Park alone causing over US $1 billion in damages.
- Bolivia had its highest CO2 emissions total this century (700 million tons), as did four states of Brazil, three states of Venezuela, and over 20 states across Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Ecuador.
- In the Brazilian Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, and the neighboring Chiquitano dry forests of Bolivia, fires were three times larger than usual and CO2 emissions reached six times the average. Concentrations of particulate matter PM 2.5 were up to 60 times the World Health Organization air quality standards and the Pantanal’s agribusiness sector lost over $200 million.
- Elsewhere around the world, there were 100 deaths in Nepal, 34 in South Africa, 23 in Côte d’Ivoire, 16 in Portugal, 15 in Turkey, and two in Canada.
Land Surface Models Reveal Dual Role of Climate in Extreme Fire Events
The scientists’ advanced modelling identified the respective roles of weather, vegetation density and ignition sources in determining the most extreme events.
Report co-lead Dr. Francesca Di Giuseppe of ECMWF explained: “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.
“Our analyses detected 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.”
Strong Climate Action Could Prevent Fire Surge in Congo
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.
The report authors warn that In the Pantanal-Chiquitano region, extreme fire seasons like 2024-25, which once might have occurred only once or twice in a lifetime, could happen every 15-20 years by the end of the century if global greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current path.
However, strong global climate action consistent with achieving net zero emissions by around 2070 would keep these events much rarer, limiting the increase in frequency to around one additional extreme season per century.
Meanwhile, there could be a five-fold increase in the extreme fires seen in the hardest-hit areas of the Congo Basin in July 2024. Strong climate action could limit the rise to 11%.
Warming Means More Wildfires, but Action Can Limit the Rate
The annual reports of global wildfires provide important evidence about wildfires, their extent, causes and impacts in different parts of the world, and how this is changing over time.
“Our climate models show the trend towards more frequent and severe wildfires will continue, especially in a world where there are high greenhouse gas emissions,” said Dr Andrew Hartley of the Met Office, a co-author of the study.
Whatever global action is taken on climate change, there will still be more wildfires across the world in future due to the warming that has already happened.
However, large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will mean the predicted increases in frequency and severity of fire will be at a much-reduced rate.
Report co-lead Dr. Matt Jones of the University of East Anglia said: “We urge world leaders at COP30 to make bold commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions rapidly this decade. This is the single most powerful contribution that most developed nations can make to avoiding the worst impacts of extreme wildfires on living and future generations.”
A Pathway to Prevention: Policy and Practice Can Reduce Wildfire Damage
Land and fire management policies and practices can also help to mitigate damage. Measures to limit the risk of fires spreading include:
- Reducing deforestation
- Managed burning in some areas to reduce the build-up of vegetation that could act as fuel for wildfires
- Putting buildings away from areas at high risk and having ‘fire breaks’
- Protecting and restoring habitats such as wetlands
- Enhancing early warning systems and fire detection systems
- Public campaigns to reduce accidental fires.
Dr. Maria Barbosa, a wildfire scientist at UKCEH and co-author of the report, added: “It is not too late to act to prevent a dramatic escalation in wildfires in regions across the world, and limit the risks to people, property, infrastructure, economies and biodiversity.”
Reference:
- State of Wildfires 2024-2025 – (https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/5377/2025/)
Source-Eurekalert