Extreme blazes drive rise in CO₂ fire emissions

Widespread wildfires in the Americas have led to an increase in global greenhouse gas emissions from fires between February and February, according to a new study released Thursday, warning that climate change is fanning the flames.

The infernos that ravaged large areas of Canada’s boreal forest and swept through South America’s vulnerable dry forests and wetlands have sparked a global CO fire₂ emissions are 10% higher than the 20-year average, according to the state of wildfire report.

This is despite a lower than average total burned area worldwide, the international team of researchers said.

The report finds that heat, drought and human activities have contributed to intensifying fires in particularly carbon-rich forests and ecosystems.

“It is the scale and frequency of these extreme events that I find most astounding,” said co-author Matthew Jones, of the University of East Anglia in eastern England.

He said satellite monitoring has shown that fires are becoming more intense across the world, spreading through key ecosystems and burning more materials than in the past.

“During these years of extreme fires, we see more fires, bigger fires, hotter fires and faster fires, and these properties all add up to extreme and destructive consequences on people and nature,” Jones told AFP.

Climate change is a key factor, helping to create optimal hot, dry conditions for fires to spread and burn.

The report, which examined extreme wildfires from March 2024 to February 2025, found that devastating infernos in Los Angeles and parts of South America were two to three times more likely due to climate change.

Warming also made the area burned in these events 25 to 35 times larger, according to the authors.

Global temperatures in 2024 were the hottest on record, exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time.

Flames last year ravaged millions of hectares of forests and farmland in Canada, the western United States and the Amazon, as well as in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, shared by Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.

Around the world, the authors said wildfires killed 100 people in Nepal, 34 in South Africa and 31 in Los Angeles during the reporting period, with smoke spreading across continents and causing dangerous levels of air pollution far from the heat of the flames.

Globally, the report says fires have released more than eight billion tonnes of CO₂ over the period 2024-2025, or around 10% above the average since 2003.

It comes after the World Meteorological Organization warned on Wednesday that the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere last year was the largest on record.

The WMO has expressed “great concern” that the land and oceans are no longer able to absorb CO.₂leaving greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

He warns that the planet could witness a so-called “vicious cycle” of climate feedback, in which increased greenhouse gas emissions fuel rising temperatures that help fuel wildfires that release more CO.₂while warmer oceans cannot absorb as much CO₂ from the air.

© 2025 AFP