{"id":480461,"date":"2026-10-19T08:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T15:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=480461"},"modified":"2026-10-19T09:10:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T16:10:51","slug":"fire-down-below-latest-state-of-wildfires-report-finds-global-burned-area-18-below-average","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=480461","title":{"rendered":"Fire Down Below. Latest State of Wildfires Report Finds Global Burned Area 18% Below Average"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Infographic
AI generated by Meta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Charles Rotter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third annual State of Wildfires report<\/a> went up as a discussion preprint in Earth System Science Data on August 3. It covers the fire season from March 2025 through February 2026. By the report\u2019s own count, global burned area was 18% below the 2002 to 2024 average<\/a>, and fire carbon emissions were 20 to 31% below average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That gets one sentence. The rest of the abstract goes region by region:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In the Midwestern Canadian Shield Forests, the epicentre of Canada\u2019s anomalous season, we find that anthropogenic climate change has doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather in this region and made the observed BA around 61 times more likely during July\u2013August 2025, while BA extent in the region is 46 times greater. Many parts of Europe also experienced record or high-ranking BA and fire C emissions, including in Spain, Portugal, and the UK, and a record USD 4.11 billion of physical assets were exposed to fire across the continent. Direct fatalities occurred in T\u00fcrkiye (17), Spain (8), Portugal (6), Cyprus (2), Greece (1) and France (1), and evacuations in T\u00fcrkiye, Spain, and Greece totalled over 110,000. In the Northwest Iberian Peninsula, we find that extreme fire weather over August 2025 was around 3 times more likely due to climate change. Under a high-emissions scenario (SSP3-7.0), fires of the same return interval are likely to burn about 78 % more area by the end of the century, with some projections within the same scenario suggesting increases of around sevenfold. In Chile and northwest Argentina, January\u2013February 2026 fires caused 23 fatalities, displaced 55,000 people and threatened a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In the Chilean Temperate Forests and Matorral, the epicentre, we find that BA was around 36 % larger due to anthropogenic climate change.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

ESSDD – State of Wildfires 2025\u20132026<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project chooses its focal events each year by the scale of their burned area, emissions and impacts<\/a>. So the worst regional fires get the attribution work, and the global total, which went down, gets a clause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A below average year could be luck. So I went to the satellite record. NASA\u2019s MODIS burned area product<\/a>, MCD64A1, maps burn scars from the Terra and Aqua satellites every month at 500 meter resolution. The University of Maryland fire group, which produces it, also distributes a quarter degree version for climate work, MCD64CMQ, with the burned hectares already summed into each grid cell. I added up every month from January 2001 through December 2023, the last full year in the files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Graph
Global area burned each year, 2001 to 2023. NASA MODIS MCD64CMQ.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The five years 2003 through 2007 averaged 450 million hectares burned. The five years 2019 through 2023 averaged 353 million. The fitted trend from 2003, when both satellites were flying, is a loss of about 1.5% per year, and it is not marginal: the odds of a trend like that turning up by chance are less than one in ten thousand. 2023, the year of Canada\u2019s record-breaking fire season<\/a>, comes in 14th of 23 globally. The lowest year in the record is 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this is a discovery. In 2017 Niels Andela and colleagues, using the same MODIS product along with the GFED4s database, reported in Science that \u201cglobal burned area declined by 24.3 \u00b1 8.8% over the past 18 years.\u201d<\/a> They traced most of it to farming, as agriculture spread into savannas and grasslands that used to burn. They also found that fire models could not reproduce the size or pattern of the decline, and suggested the models may overestimate fire emissions in future projections. At the time, MODIS alone gave them \u22121.15% per year for 2003 to 2015<\/a>, significant only at the 90% level. Eight more years of data have taken care of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MODIS at 500 meters misses a lot of small fires, so in 2023 the GFED team rebuilt the record. Chen et al.<\/a> corrected MCD64A1 against Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery, which see small burns MODIS doesn\u2019t, and their total came out 93% higher<\/a>. The decline survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the abstract:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The global annual burned area during 2001\u20132020 is estimated to be 774 \u00b1 63 Mha yr\u22121 or 5.9 \u00b1 0.5 % of ice-free land. Burned area declined by 1.21 \u00b1 0.66 % yr\u22121, a cumulative decrease of 24.2 \u00b1 13.2 % over 20 years. \u2026 The global reduction is primarily driven by a decrease in fires in savannas, grasslands, and croplands. \u2026 Forest, peat, and deforestation fires did not exhibit significant long-term trends.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

ESSD – Multi-decadal trends and variability in burned area from the fifth version of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED5)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the raw satellite product, the Science paper and the corrected database all point the same way. About a quarter less land burns each year than at the start of the century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The usual answer is that the decline is African grassland and doesn\u2019t count. Africa is most of it. But I split the totals with a rough box around the continent, and the rest of the world is falling at about the same rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Line
Burned area in a box around Africa and everywhere else, 2001 to 2023. NASA MODIS MCD64CMQ.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The right panel is noisier, and the trend there is weaker statistically, but it is down, not up. North of 50\u00b0N, where the boreal forests are, the series jumps around with no significant trend in either direction. Its biggest year is still 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The field has a response to all this. In June 2024 Calum Cunningham of the University of Tasmania and colleagues took roughly 30 million fires, kept the 2,913 most energetic, and found that these extreme events increased 2.2-fold from 2003 to 2023<\/a>. Cunningham told the Washington Post the work began as a response to skeptics<\/a> who asked how there could be a growing fire crisis while the area burned was shrinking. The increases are real and concentrated in temperate conifer and boreal forests<\/a>. But the measure is about one fire in ten thousand, on a record that starts in 2003, and by Nature\u2019s own account<\/a> the study does not directly connect the trend to global warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new report also \u201cclaims\u201d, essentially an unsupported assertion, that mitigation has already reduced end-of-century wildfire risk compared with a worst-case emissions scenario<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Continued climate change is expected to intensify these hydroclimatic extremes, yet mitigation has already reduced projected end-of-century wildfire risk: under a high-end emissions pathway (SSP3-7.0), the extreme BA events in our focal regions are projected to be 4\u201323 % smaller than they would have been under a worst-case emissions scenario no longer considered credible (SSP5-8.5).<\/strong> emphasis added<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

ESSDD – State of Wildfires 2025\u20132026<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SSP5-8.5 was never the road we were on. Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters pointed out in Nature in 2020<\/a> that it requires \u201can unprecedented fivefold increase in coal use by the end of the century,\u201d and that global coal use peaked in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was nothing to mitigate.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global burned area was 18% below average this past season and has been falling for two decades. Why is that one sentence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the fire models could not reproduce the decline in 2017, how much weight do their end-of-century projections carry now?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Quotes from Chen et al. 2023, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5194\/essd-15-5227-2023<\/a>, and Burton et al. 2026 (preprint), https:\/\/essd.copernicus.org\/preprints\/essd-2026-587\/<\/a>, used under CC BY 4.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burned area data: NASA MODIS MCD64CMQ Collection 6.1<\/a>, monthly 0.25\u00b0 burned area, January 2001 to December 2023, from the University of Maryland fire group (fuoco.geog.umd.edu). Annual totals are sums of the monthly BurnedArea field. \u201cAfrica\u201d is the box 36\u00b0S to 38\u00b0N, 18\u00b0W to 52\u00b0E.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link to spreadsheet<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The third annual State of Wildfires report went up as a discussion preprint in Earth System Science Data on August 3. It covers the fire season from March 2025 through February 2026. By the report\u2019s own count, global burned area was 18% below the 2002 to 2024 average, and fire carbon emissions were 20 to 31% below average.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":480462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"Discover the latest findings on global wildfires, revealing an 18% decline in burned area, with significant regional impacts and trends.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Global Wildfire Report: Burned Area 18% Below Average","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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":[691846537,691846535,691846539,691846538,691846536,691818913],"class_list":["post-480461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-earth-system-science-data-on-august-3","tag-global-burned-area","tag-mcd64a1","tag-nasas-modis","tag-state-of-wildfires-report","tag-wildfires","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-20Zn","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":413504,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=413504","url_meta":{"origin":480461,"position":0},"title":"SPACE.com Swallows Lies that Climate Change Is Making Wildfires Worse, It Isn\u2019t","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"11\/16\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"SPACE.com ran a story claiming that 2024\/2025\u2019s wildfires are proof that climate change is making wildfires larger and more severe. This is false. Ground based data, where available, and satellite data both show that wildfires have declined in number and acreage lost over the past century, even as the Earth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"2021 Sixth Assessment report\"","block_context":{"text":"2021 Sixth Assessment report","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=2021-sixth-assessment-report"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMkpt7UOrhg2-7jFpvSKAAUpRuwWibRM9_ICphtZYGHavznOxnNPD3uRAsbEmdoUzT0hSkzkrQp7Q485ikqhdS6Y7sdWBpLCh3v5Qm_pUyPvMuum_m0d3Q66oYwH3qNKv29yNqrRwCmdTM-yEO5mQodZ3mZ.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMkpt7UOrhg2-7jFpvSKAAUpRuwWibRM9_ICphtZYGHavznOxnNPD3uRAsbEmdoUzT0hSkzkrQp7Q485ikqhdS6Y7sdWBpLCh3v5Qm_pUyPvMuum_m0d3Q66oYwH3qNKv29yNqrRwCmdTM-yEO5mQodZ3mZ.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMkpt7UOrhg2-7jFpvSKAAUpRuwWibRM9_ICphtZYGHavznOxnNPD3uRAsbEmdoUzT0hSkzkrQp7Q485ikqhdS6Y7sdWBpLCh3v5Qm_pUyPvMuum_m0d3Q66oYwH3qNKv29yNqrRwCmdTM-yEO5mQodZ3mZ.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMkpt7UOrhg2-7jFpvSKAAUpRuwWibRM9_ICphtZYGHavznOxnNPD3uRAsbEmdoUzT0hSkzkrQp7Q485ikqhdS6Y7sdWBpLCh3v5Qm_pUyPvMuum_m0d3Q66oYwH3qNKv29yNqrRwCmdTM-yEO5mQodZ3mZ.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AQMkpt7UOrhg2-7jFpvSKAAUpRuwWibRM9_ICphtZYGHavznOxnNPD3uRAsbEmdoUzT0hSkzkrQp7Q485ikqhdS6Y7sdWBpLCh3v5Qm_pUyPvMuum_m0d3Q66oYwH3qNKv29yNqrRwCmdTM-yEO5mQodZ3mZ.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":408952,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=408952","url_meta":{"origin":480461,"position":1},"title":"Wildfires Below Average Last Year\u2013Met Office Says Global Warming Has Made Them\u00a0Worse!","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"10\/18\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Met Office are no longer a serious, scientific organisation, but a political one:","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AQMF2RC5Jjji6Dch8PzY9wqxn3ftNQ_aF3yvJAIvmBTDh4pwINZnWSYWX8C_NV-wmkmLV7wy9TQFYmjMP5g8qHYDqbddPY38n64DIGhAT3j8F8Yc1p1AUYClmitVw-HUn9hQhjugba7wX8OJVoy_xC9OjBKQ-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AQMF2RC5Jjji6Dch8PzY9wqxn3ftNQ_aF3yvJAIvmBTDh4pwINZnWSYWX8C_NV-wmkmLV7wy9TQFYmjMP5g8qHYDqbddPY38n64DIGhAT3j8F8Yc1p1AUYClmitVw-HUn9hQhjugba7wX8OJVoy_xC9OjBKQ-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AQMF2RC5Jjji6Dch8PzY9wqxn3ftNQ_aF3yvJAIvmBTDh4pwINZnWSYWX8C_NV-wmkmLV7wy9TQFYmjMP5g8qHYDqbddPY38n64DIGhAT3j8F8Yc1p1AUYClmitVw-HUn9hQhjugba7wX8OJVoy_xC9OjBKQ-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AQMF2RC5Jjji6Dch8PzY9wqxn3ftNQ_aF3yvJAIvmBTDh4pwINZnWSYWX8C_NV-wmkmLV7wy9TQFYmjMP5g8qHYDqbddPY38n64DIGhAT3j8F8Yc1p1AUYClmitVw-HUn9hQhjugba7wX8OJVoy_xC9OjBKQ-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AQMF2RC5Jjji6Dch8PzY9wqxn3ftNQ_aF3yvJAIvmBTDh4pwINZnWSYWX8C_NV-wmkmLV7wy9TQFYmjMP5g8qHYDqbddPY38n64DIGhAT3j8F8Yc1p1AUYClmitVw-HUn9hQhjugba7wX8OJVoy_xC9OjBKQ-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":409613,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=409613","url_meta":{"origin":480461,"position":2},"title":"Rain causes wildfires \u2013 the climate change gospel\u00a0","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"10\/22\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Met Office is determined to convince us of the immediate need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. 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Climate Change Has Them Burning Overtime\u201d that human-caused climate change is causing fires to burn later into the night and earlier in the morning. Dozens of media outlets picked up the story. This is false. Wind-driven\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0Screenshot-2026-04-28-185900.png?fit=1118%2C926&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0Screenshot-2026-04-28-185900.png?fit=1118%2C926&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0Screenshot-2026-04-28-185900.png?fit=1118%2C926&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0Screenshot-2026-04-28-185900.png?fit=1118%2C926&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0Screenshot-2026-04-28-185900.png?fit=1118%2C926&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":267419,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=267419","url_meta":{"origin":480461,"position":5},"title":"It\u2019s not the climate, it\u2019s the fuel","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"07\/14\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\u201cWildfires have been getting less frequent in Canada over the past 30 years,\u201d McKitrick writes. \u201cThe annual number of fires grew from 1959 to 1990, peaking in 1989 at just over 12,000 that year, and has been trending down since. From 2017 to 2021 (the most recent interval available), there\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0rawImage.jpg?fit=1200%2C776&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0rawImage.jpg?fit=1200%2C776&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0rawImage.jpg?fit=1200%2C776&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0rawImage.jpg?fit=1200%2C776&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/0rawImage.jpg?fit=1200%2C776&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/0-Fire-Down-Below.-Latest-State-of-Wildfires-Report-Finds-Global-Burned-Area-18-Below-Average.jpg?fit=2048%2C1152&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480461"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480507,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480461\/revisions\/480507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/480462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}