{"id":401747,"date":"2025-09-12T18:04:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T16:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=401747"},"modified":"2025-09-12T18:04:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T16:04:56","slug":"no-al-jazeera-climate-change-is-resulting-in-more-air-pollution-from-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=401747","title":{"rendered":"No, Al Jazeera, Climate Change Is Resulting in More Air Pollution from Wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Firefighters<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Linnea Lueken<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Wildfire smoke from Aude. Simon de l’Ouest, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Al Jazeera posted an article titled \u201cClimate-change-driven wildfires increasing air pollution across globe: UN<\/a>,\u201d which claims that wildfires are becoming more frequent due to climate change, and so air pollution from their smoke is as well. This is false and it\u2019s telling that they framed it the way they did. Wildfires are not getting worse, according to satellite data, and so air pollution due to them is also not getting worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al Jazeera reported that wildfire smoke \u201cmade significant contributions to air pollution last year, according to the United Nations\u2019 weather and climate agency[.]\u201d This may be true, wildfires do produce air pollution, but what they say next takes this story from factual to false:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a report released on Friday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said wildfires, likely to have been made more frequent by climate change, are releasing a \u201cwitches\u2019 brew\u201d of pollutants that can end up wrecking air quality a continent away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, wildfires absolutely do contribute to air pollution, and they may have caused significant pollution last year, but the framing \u2013 that this is getting worse due to climate change\u2014is completely false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article does not outright say that anyone tracked a long-term record of increasing air pollution due to wildfires. That is probably because there is no data to support that idea. Indeed, towards the end of the article they acknowledge that human interventions, especially in cities, to mitigate air pollution have had measurable and dramatic effect, with \u201clong term, a strong decrease\u201d over time in recorded air pollution, according to the WMO global atmosphere chief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily the claim of increasing wildfires causing more pollution is an easy bit of alarmist narrative to slap down. In order for there to be an increase in global air pollution from wildfires over time due to global warming, there needs to be an increase in wildfires in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, data show that this is not the case.\u00a0Satellite data from NASA<\/a>\u00a0show that global burned acreage has significantly declined over the period of record since 1998. (See figure below)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Figure 1: Total acreage burned by fires each year between 2003 and 2015. Trend line in red indicates a steady decline. Source: \u201cNASA detects drop in global fires,\u201d NASA website, June 29, 2017.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

According to that NASA data, despite the modest warming of the last several decades, wildfires have declined 24 percent since 1998. As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Global Wildfires<\/a>, European Space Agency (ESA) data also confirms this trend. Also, reconstructions of global historical records show that wildfires have been in a significant long-term decline since the early 1900s, at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the regions highlighted by Al Jazeera was the Amazon basin, in which last year the WMO reported the \u201cbiggest PM 2.5 surge.\u201d But is this driven by an increase in wildfires? Again, no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data from Copernicus<\/a>, a joint project of the ESA and NASA, show fires are trending down in Brazil, where most of the Amazon basin is located.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A
Figure 2: Wildfire burned area and number of fires, Brazil, from Copernicus: https:\/\/gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu\/apps\/country.profile\/charts\/ba\/ADM0\/BRA\/2023\/2002\/2023<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Climate Realism<\/em> has shown many times<\/a> that this is the case, especially globally, and yet alarmists in the media continue to promote the narrative that climate change is making wildfires worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They say, \u201cwhere there\u2019s smoke, there\u2019s fire,\u201d but in this case there is no fire, and thus no resulting smoke. Al Jazeera could have easily checked this data but instead produced a misleading and alarming report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al Jazeera posted an article titled \u201cClimate-change-driven wildfires increasing air pollution across globe: UN,\u201d which claims that wildfires are becoming more frequent due to climate change, and so air pollution from their smoke is as well. This is false and it\u2019s telling that they framed it the way they did. Wildfires are not getting worse, according to satellite data, and so air pollution due to them is also not getting worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":401755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"Explore how Al Jazeera's claims about climate change and wildfires misunderstand the data, revealing a decline in wildfire-related air pollution.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Debunking Climate Change Myths: Wildfires and Air Pollution","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691822337,691826617,691818056,691837934,691822640,691818913,691821138],"class_list":{"0":"post-401747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-air-pollution","9":"tag-al-jazeera","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-european-space-agency-esa","12":"tag-satellite-data","13":"tag-wildfires","14":"tag-world-meteorological-organization-wmo","16":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0AQPFIYp_9mvA4Z8DZWaJayg-kfzOkAjldLQPG2AajXrW_U-0q-N7fkMkm9uJsQB3QHPyXM_CyBlSPnh9e1_edLhDnF1jH0sR8fvtTmCbIuS4mfMdB4N9XlwAJK-aNitIosO0HOJmsnITOnl9mUKi1iT6rNDp3A-1.jpeg?fit=1280%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1GvN","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":406869,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=406869","url_meta":{"origin":401747,"position":0},"title":"Climate Fact-Check September 2025","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"07\/10\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"This summary serves as a fact check on the top false claims made\u00a0about climate change by the media in September 2025.\u00a0","rel":"","context":"In \"bigger hailstones\"","block_context":{"text":"bigger hailstones","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bigger-hailstones"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0September-2025-fact-check.png?fit=1200%2C672&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0September-2025-fact-check.png?fit=1200%2C672&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0September-2025-fact-check.png?fit=1200%2C672&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0September-2025-fact-check.png?fit=1200%2C672&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0September-2025-fact-check.png?fit=1200%2C672&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":388620,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=388620","url_meta":{"origin":401747,"position":1},"title":"Al Jazeera Wrongly Hypes a Climate Connection to Recent European Heatwaves","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"13\/07\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent article at Al Jazeera, titled \u201cWildfire risks as climate change fuels extreme heatwave in Southern Europe,\u201d claims that recent heatwaves in parts of southern Europe are due to climate change, which the publication says is making them more intense, and will inevitably cause more deaths. 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