The State of Wildfires report, which will be published annually, was released this week and analyses the extreme wildfires of the 2023-2024 fire season (March 2023-February 2024), assessing the causes, predictability, and the attribution of these events to climate change and land use.
In addition to this, the report, co-led by the University of East Anglia (UEA, UK), the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the Met Office (UK) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF, UK), also looks at how the risk of similar events will change in future under different climate change scenarios.
The report found that fire carbon emissions were 16 per cent above average during this period, totalling 8.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Further, if it had not been a quiet fire season in the African savannahs, then the 2023-24 fire season would have set a new record for CO2 emissions from fires globally, it was shared.
There was record fire activity in Canada’s boreal forests, the report noted, with fire emissions over nine times the average, contributing significantly towards global carbon emissions.
Indeed, in Canada, extreme and widespread fires led to over 150,000 km2 being burned, prompting evacuations of 232,000 people.
Northern parts of South America also saw an “unusually high” number of fires.
The 2023 fire season in western Amazonia saw unprecedented fire counts, the report outlined, with new records set across the State of Amazonas in Brazil, Loreto Department in Peru, and La Paz and Beni departments in Bolivia.
Meanwhile, the Evros fire in Greece set a new EU record for individual fire size (around 900 km2) and killed 19 people.
According to the report, climate change made extreme fire-prone weather at least three times more likely in Canada, 20 times more likely in Amazonia, and twice as likely in Greece.
Moreover, climate models used in the report indicate that extreme wildfires will increase in frequency and intensity by the end of the century, particularly in future scenarios where greenhouse gas emissions remain high.
“As long as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the risk of extreme wildfires will escalate,” said Dr Douglas Kelley, Senior Fire Scientist at UKCEH.
Dr Kelley added that “whatever emissions scenario we follow,” risks of extreme wildfires will increase in Canada, highlighting that society must not only cut emissions but also adapt to changing wildfire risks.
“These projections highlight the urgent need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage vegetation in order to reduce the risk and impacts of increasingly severe wildfires on society and ecosystems,” added Dr Kelley.
Read the full report here.