Wildfires and smoke are becoming more deadly around the world, research shows

Two recently released pieces of research paint a worrying picture of future wildland firefighting efforts: wildfires are burning more acreage, and wildfire smoke killing thousands more people than it previously did.

Both research studies, published Monday in the Nature Climate Change scientific journal, point to future challenges land management agencies will have to face as climate change creates hotter and more volatile conditions.

“The rate at which climate change impacts on wildfires is increasing every year,” Professor Wim Thiery, a co-author of the smoke study, told The Natural History Museum of London. “As we witness increasingly destructive fire seasons worldwide, it is essential that we not only adapt our policies to better manage fires, but also address the underlying causes of climate change.”

The first study looked into how climate change affects regional burned area patterns and found global burned area increases.

Simulations found climate change increased global burned area by 15.8% between 2003 and 2019, along with a 22% increase in the probability of experiencing months with above-average totals of burned area. Burned area also increased 0.22% per year globally, with the largest increase found in central Australia.

As wildfires burn more land, and average temperatures around the world continue to increase, so do deaths from air pollution from the flames’ smoke, according to researchers from the second study.

Researchers used “well-tested fire-vegetation” models to attribute global human mortality from PM2.5 emissions from wildfires to climate change. The models estimated around 10,000 more people died from wildfire smoke in the 2010s compared with the 1960s.

“Of the 46,401 (1960s) to 98,748 (2010s) annual fire PM_2.5 mortalities, 669 (1.2%, 1960s) to 12,566 (12.8%, 2010s) were attributed to climate change,” the researchers said. “The most substantial influence of climate change on fire mortality occurred in South America, Australia and Europe, coinciding with decreased relative humidity and in boreal forests with increased air temperature.”