Abstract. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires globally, with significant impacts on society and the environment. However, our understanding of the global distribution of extreme fires remains skewed, primarily influenced by media coverage and regional research concentration. This inaugural State of Wildfires report systematically analyses fire activity worldwide, identifying extreme events from the March 2023\u2013February 2024 fire season. We assess the causes, predictability, and attribution of these events to climate change and land use, and forecast future risks under different climate scenarios. During the 2023\u201324 fire season, 3.9 million km2 burned globally, slightly below the average of previous seasons, but fire carbon (C) emissions were 16 % above average, totaling 2.4 Pg C. This was driven by record emissions in Canadian boreal forests (over 9 times the average) and dampened by reduced activity in African savannahs. Notable events included record-breaking wildfire extent and emissions in Canada, the largest recorded wildfire in the European Union (Greece), drought-driven fires in western Amazonia and northern parts of South America, and deadly fires in Hawai\u2019i (100 deaths) and Chile (131 deaths). Over 232,000 people were evacuated in Canada alone, highlighting the severity of human impact. Our analyses revealed that multiple drivers were needed to cause areas of extreme fire activity. In Canada and Greece a combination of high fire weather and an abundance of dry fuels increased the probability of fires by 4.5-fold and 1.9\u20134.1-fold, respectively, whereas fuel load and direct human suppression often modulated areas with anomalous burned area. The fire season in Canada was predictable three months in advance based on the fire weather index, whereas events in Greece and Amazonia had shorter predictability horizons. Formal attribution analyses indicated that the probability of extreme events has increased significantly due to anthropogenic climate change, with a 2.9\u20133.6-fold increase in likelihood of high fire weather in Canada and a 20.0\u201328.5-fold increase in Amazonia. By the end of the century, events of similar magnitude are projected to occur 2.22\u20139.58 times more frequently in Canada under high emission scenarios. Without mitigation, regions like Western Amazonia could see up to a 2.9-fold increase in extreme fire events. For the 2024\u201325 fire season, seasonal forecasts highlight moderate positive anomalies in fire weather for parts of western Canada and South America, but no clear signal for extreme anomalies is present in the forecast. This report represents our first annual effort to catalogue extreme wildfire events, explain their occurrence, and predict future risks. By consolidating state-of-the-art wildfire science and delivering key insights relevant to policymakers, disaster management services, firefighting agencies, and land managers, we aim to enhance society\u2019s resilience to wildfires and promote advances in preparedness, mitigation, and adaptation.
", "keywords": ["Agricultural", "550", "Forestry Sciences", "Veterinary and Food Sciences", "attribution", "15. Life on land", "16. Peace & justice", "7. Clean energy", "wildfire", "6. Clean water", "Climate Action", "climate change", "extreme fire", "13. Climate action", "Ecological Applications", "11. Sustainability", "Climate-Related Exposures and Conditions", "Environmental Sciences"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-218"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.5194/essd-2024-218", "name": "item", "description": "10.5194/essd-2024-218", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.5194/essd-2024-218"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2024-06-13T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.5194/essd-2025-483", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-05-23T16:21:32Z", "type": "Report", "created": "2025-08-15", "title": "State of Wildfires 2024\u201325", "description": "Abstract. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires globally, yet our understanding of these high-impact events remains uneven and shaped by media attention and regional research biases. The State of Wildfire Project systematically tracks and analyses global fire activity and this, its second annual report, covers the March 2024 to February 2025 fire season. During the 2024\u201325 fire season, fire-related carbon (C) emissions were totalled 2.2 Pg C, 9 % above average and the 6th highest on record since 2003, despite below-average global burned area (BA; 3.7 million km2). Extreme fire seasons in South America\u2019s rainforests, dry forests and wetlands, and in Canada\u2019s boreal forests pushed up the global C emissions total. Fire C emissions were over four times above average in Bolivia, three times above average in Canada, and ~50 % above average in Brazil and Venezuela. Wildfires in 2024\u201325 caused 100 fatalities in Nepal, 34 in South Africa, and 30 in Los Angeles, with additional fatalities reported in Canada, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Portugal, and Turkey. The Eaton and Palisades fires in Southern California caused 150,000 evacuations and US$140 billion in damages. Communities in Brazil, Bolivia, Southern California, and Northern India were exposed to fine particulate matter at concentrations 13\u201360 times WHO\u2019s daily air quality standards. We evaluated the causes and predictability of four extreme wildfire episodes from the 2024\u201325 fire season, including in Northeast Amazonia (January\u2013March 2024), the Pantanal-Chiquitano border regions of Brazil and Bolivia (July\u2013September 2024), Southern California (January 2025), and the Congo Basin (July\u2013August 2024). Anomalous weather created conditions for these regional extremes, while fuel availability and human ignitions shaped spatial patterns and temporal fire dynamics. In the three tropical regions, prolonged drought was the dominant fire enabler, whereas in California, extreme heat, wind, and antecedent fuel build-up were the dominant enablers. Our attribution analyses show that climate change made extreme fire weather in Northeast Amazonia 30\u201370 times more likely, increasing burned area roughly fourfold compared to a scenario without climate change. In the Pantanal\u2013Chiquitano, fire weather was 4\u20135 times more likely, with up to 35-fold increases in burned area. In Southern California, climate change made larger burned area 89 % more likely, with burned area up to 25 times higher. The Congo Basin\u2019s fire weather was 3\u20138 times more likely with climate change, with a 2.7-fold increase in burned area. Socioeconomic changes since the pre-industrial period, including land-use change, also likely increased burned area in Northeast Amazonia. Our models project that events on the scale of 2024\u201325 will become up to 57 %, 34 %, and 50 % more frequent than in the modern era in Northeast Amazonia, the Pantanal-Chiquitano, and the Congo Basin, respectively, under a middle-of-the-road scenario (SSP370). Climate action can limit the added risk, with frequency increases kept below 15 % in all three regions under a strong mitigation scenario (SSP126). In Southern California, the future trajectory of extreme fire likelihood remains highly uncertain due to poorly constrained climate-vegetation-fire interactions influencing fuel moisture, though our models suggest that risk may decline in future. This annual report from the State of Wildfires Project integrates and advances cutting-edge fire observations and modelling with regional expertise to track changing global wildfire hazard, guiding policy and practice towards improved preparedness, mitigation, adaptation, and societal benefit. Thirteen new datasets and model codebases presented in this work are available from the State of Wildfires Project\u2019s Zenodo community (https://zenodo.org/communities/stateofwildfiresproject, last access: 11 August 2025).
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