Visualising Extreme Wildfires in 2023-2024

The State of Wildfires 2023-2024 report focuses on extreme and impactful wildfires of the latest fire season.

Use this interactive map and chart to explore anomalies in fire count, burned area, emissions, fire size, and fire rate of growth in the 2023-24 fire season, versus previous fire seasons since 2002. They show regional extreme values in five key metrics of fire season extremity during the 2023-2024 fire season, compared with previous fire seasons since 2002. The mapped data includes departures in each metric from their average values, showing how they vary spatially or through time.

How to use these interactive visualisation apps

You can choose to view how the values of the area burned by fires, carbon emissions from fires, and the number of fires in the 2023-2024 fire season compared with previous fire seasons. Selecting the 95th percentile fire size metric allows you to view regions where fires were larger than usual, and likewise selecting the 95th percentile fire rate of growth allows you to view regions where fires spread faster than usual. Zoom and click a region to find out how the 2023-2024 fire season ranked versus previous years across all of these metrics. You can download the data for each layer or save the map image from buttons within the app. For more information about the variables shown, click the information [i] button within the app. You can add and remove regions using the region input box. You can also view the data in a table or download an image file from buttons within the app.

Launch of the Inaugural “State of Wildfires” Report

The major new report led by Dr Matthew Jones of the University of East Anglia (UEA), and co-led by colleagues Dr Douglas Kelley (UK CEH), Dr Chantelle Burton (UK Met Office), and Dr Francesca Di Giuseppe (ECMWF), is published in the journal Earth System Science Data. It is going to be an annual report that takes stock of extremes of the most recent fire season and seeks to explain why those extremes arose, the causes of wildfires, and the role played by climate change, as well as the future trends.

The report finds that 3.9 million km² burned globally during 2023-2024, which was slightly below average (4.0 million km2). Despite this, global carbon emissions from wildfires were 16% above average, totalling 8.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (Gt CO2), because forest fires holding dense carbon stocks were more widespread than usual. In particular, fire CO2 emissions were 9 times higher than average in Canada during 2023-2024.

Extreme Wildfires

The 2023-2024 fire season was marked by a range of highly impactful wildfires. Record fire counts, extent and emissions occurred in Canada. The largest fire ever recorded in Europe killed 19 people in Greece. Drought-driven fires in Brazil’s Amazonas state and in neighbouring parts of the Amazon rainforest in Bolivia, Peru, and Venezuela prompted some of the worst air quality ratings on the planet. Deadly fires killed over 100 people in both Hawaii and Chile. Over 232,000 people were evacuated in Canada alone, highlighting the severity of human impact.

Dr Jones said “The 2023-2024 fire season was record-breaking in many world regions. By many measures, the standout event of the year was Canada, which saw almost a decade’s worth of carbon emissions from fire in just a single fire season”.

What role has climate change played?

The State of Wildfires 2023-2024 report focuses on explaining the causes of three key events of the 2023-2024 fire season.

The study also found that climate change has led to a three to four-fold increase in the likelihood of an event on the scale of the 2023-2024 fire season in Canada, as well as by a factor of two to four in Greece and at least 20 in western Amazonia.

Dr Jones said that wildfires in Canada during 2023-2024 were “unprecedented in scale and made three to four times more likely by climate change.”

Moreover, the results suggest that in Canada, fire extent was limited by changes in land use and other human factors, such as fire suppression. The increase in fire-prone weather caused by climate change was partly offset by land use, which limited fuel loads in some areas and inhibited fire spread. In contrast, human factors, including ignitions, were found to have exacerbated fire extent in Amazonia, amplifying the effect of climate change.

Future trends

Modelling conducted as part of the report suggests that, by 2100, fire extent similar to the 2023-2024 fire season could become over six times more likely in Canada under a mid-high emissions scenario (SSP370). Similarly, years with fires on the scale of those seen in Greece during 2023-2024 are projected to double in frequency.

Increases in the future likelihood of extreme wildfire events on the scale of 2023-2024 can be minimised by climate change mitigation. Following a deep-mitigation scenario (SSP126) can limit the future likelihood in Canada, Greece and Amazonia to levels that do not differ significantly from the recent period.

The State of Wildfires 2023-2024 Report is published in the journal Earth Systems Science Data.