Wildfires filled the headlines of 2025 from the US to South Korea to Spain and beyond, but an annual report shows that last year was actually one of the lowest fire years of this century.
At the global scale, land area burnt by wildfires in 2025 was nearly 828 million acres, which was the second-lowest on record since 2002 and around 16% below the average burned area of 2002 to 2024, according to the updated annual report published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. Last year also had the third-lowest total carbon dioxide emissions since 2002, around 12% below the 2002-2024 emissions average. And yet, wildfires killed more than 90 people and forced over 300,000 evacuations.
Researchers said the low burned area total in the midst of persistent extreme wildfires is a hallmark of our current era, especially in areas of social and economic inequality. The key points of the report included:
- Emissions from Canada’s boreal forest wildfires from between 2023 and 2025 exceeded the combined emissions of the preceding 15 years
- Los Angeles’ wildfires in January ranked as the fifth most costly natural disaster in world history
- The United Kingdom experienced its first “megafire” exceeding 25,000 acres as wildfires throughout Europe were fueled by widespread drought and heat extremes
“A catalogue of extreme wildfires in 2025 continues to demonstrate that devastating consequences are not governed by area burned alone…Although the year’s most damaging events did not always coincide with exceptional total area burned, they produced acute societally disastrous outcomes,” the researchers said in the report. “Overall, the frequency of extreme fires in fuel-rich temperate and high-latitude systems, drought-driven fire activity in Europe, and disproportionate human impacts when extreme fires intersect with exposed communities are expected to further increase under continued warming.”
Researchers also warned that the database used in the report to establish the economic costs of major wildfires faces an “urgent finding crisis” following the cuts to USAID funding, according to the report’s lead author Matt Jones, from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK. Scientists who rely on the database warn that the consequences of its loss would be practical, immediate, and damaging, and are asking the public for support through the signing of an open letter.
“In an era of intensifying climate extremes, cascading risks, and compounding crises, reliable data are not a luxury,” the scientists said. “They are the infrastructure for informed decision-making. Disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, anticipatory action, and climate adaptation all require credible historical baselines.”
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