State of Wildfires 2023–2024 – ESSD

State of Wildfires 2023–2024 – ESSD

The 2023–2024 fire season was marked by unprecedented events across the globe, from the record-breaking blazes in Canada’s boreal forests to the devastating Evros fire in Greece—the largest wildfire on record in the European Union. These extreme wildfires underscore the worsening impacts of climate change and the urgent need for enhanced preparedness, mitigation, and adaptation strategies.

Wildfire Trends

Wildfire activity has shifted dramatically in recent years, with a decline in the total area burned globally but a significant rise in the frequency and intensity of high-impact events. Burned area (BA) has fallen by around 25% since the start of the century, mainly due to a reduction in fires in the global savannas. However, this masks concerning regional trends, with areas like eastern Siberia and the western United States experiencing over 40% increases in BA since 2000.

The most prominent shift has been the growing prevalence of wildfires in forested ecosystems, which provide crucial ecosystem services like carbon storage and biodiversity. The intensification of fire regimes in environments less adapted to fire is particularly concerning, as these systems are expected to be the least resilient to such changes.

Emissions and Air Quality

The extreme wildfires of 2023–2024 had significant impacts on atmospheric composition and air quality. Fire carbon (C) emissions reached 2.4 PgC, 16% above the average, driven primarily by record-breaking emissions from the Canadian boreal forests. These massive emissions are comparable in magnitude to the annual CO2 output of major economies like India, the EU, or the United States.

Degraded air quality related to fires is experienced most acutely in the tropics, often disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities. However, the 2023 blazes in North America also blanketed cities in thick smoke, underlining the global nature of this issue. Wildfire smoke can lead to severe respiratory and cardiovascular health impacts, causing an estimated 10 million premature deaths globally since 1990.

Ecosystem Impacts

Extreme wildfires can have devastating impacts on ecosystems, from the loss of carbon storage in forests and peatlands to the disruption of habitat for endemic species. The boreal forests of Canada and Siberia, which experienced record-breaking fires, are crucial natural carbon sinks. However, the massive emissions from these events, combined with increased vegetation mortality and loss of ecosystem function, can transform these landscapes from carbon sinks to sources.

Wildfires can also degrade the lands and territories of Indigenous and traditional communities, raising climate justice concerns. Moreover, the stigmatization of small-scale traditional fire use has led to prohibitive fire governance that can negatively impact local livelihoods.

Mitigation Strategies

Policymakers, disaster management agencies, and land managers are seeking to enhance wildfire preparedness and response through a variety of strategies. National and international organizations are producing reports to consolidate evidence on changing fire risks and identify best practices, such as fuel reduction, innovative fire detection, and integrated fire management.

Operators of carbon market projects and forest conservation initiatives are also wary of the risks that wildfires pose to the permanence of carbon offsets, which are a key tool in national and international plans for achieving net-zero emissions.

Risk Assessment

As extreme wildfires become more frequent, stakeholders increasingly turn to scientists for answers. The State of Wildfires report represents a new initiative to routinely catalogue extreme fire events, diagnose their drivers, and attribute them to climate change and land-use factors. This includes leveraging advances in predictive modeling, causal inference, and attribution science to provide timely information to policymakers, the media, and the public.

The report identifies extreme events based on anomalies in burned area, fire carbon emissions, and individual fire characteristics like size and rate of growth. It then applies state-of-the-art modeling approaches to disentangle the contributions of weather, fuel, and human factors to these extremes. Finally, it uses climate model projections to assess how the likelihood of such events may change in the future under different emissions scenarios.

Disaster Response

The extreme wildfires of 2023–2024 have significantly stretched the capacities of firefighting agencies and disaster management services. In Canada, the country was at its highest national preparedness level for an unprecedented 120 continuous days, necessitating extensive international assistance. Over 232,000 people were evacuated across the country due to the fires.

Enhancing societal resilience to wildfires requires coordinated efforts across multiple domains, from improving early warning systems to strengthening community-level preparedness and recovery plans. Collaboration between policymakers, fire management agencies, and local stakeholders will be crucial in navigating this challenge.

Policy and Governance

Mitigating and adapting to the growing wildfire threat requires comprehensive policy frameworks and international cooperation. Many governments and organizations are working to develop robust regulations, including permit systems for fuel reduction and enhanced coordination among firefighting agencies.

Initiatives such as the UN Environment Programme, the World Bank, and the OECD are highlighting best practices and fostering collaboration to address this global challenge. Integrating wildfire risk into national climate action plans and developing innovative financial mechanisms, like insurance schemes, will also be crucial moving forward.

Technological Advances

The fire science community is continuously enhancing its capacity to observe, predict, and model extreme wildfires and their impacts. Advances in remote sensing, predictive analytics, and automated systems are improving our ability to detect and respond to fires in near-real time.

Moreover, the integration of diverse data sources, from meteorological forecasts to fuel load observations, is enabling more sophisticated causal inference and attribution analyses. These tools are crucial for informing policy decisions and improving societal resilience to the growing threat of extreme wildfires.

The State of Wildfires report will be an annually recurring publication, leveraging the latest scientific advancements to provide policymakers, disaster management services, and the public with timely and actionable insights. By consolidating the state of the art in wildfire science, this report aims to enhance global preparedness and promote effective mitigation and adaptation strategies in the face of a rapidly evolving fire landscape.

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