No fire emission increases the extreme blaze drive

Massive wildfires in the U.S. leapfrogged the year in February in global greenhouse gas emissions, new research found Thursday, warning that climate change is fueling the flames.

Infernos that destroyed huge areas of Canada’s boreal forest and swept through dry forests and fragile wetlands in South America.₂ The State Wildfire report indicates that emissions are more than 10% above the 20-year average.

This is despite areas of overall low levels around the world, the international team of researchers said.

The report notes that warming, drought and human activity have helped intensify blazes, particularly in carbon-rich forests and ecosystems.

“It’s the scale and frequency of these extreme events that I find most surprising,” said co-author Matthew Jones of the University of East Anglia in East England.

Satellite monitoring has shown that fires around the world are becoming more intense, spreading across key ecosystems and burning more material than in the past, he said.

“During these extreme wildfire years, we see more fires, bigger fires, hotter fires and faster fires and these properties have overall seen extreme and devastating impacts on people and nature,” Jones told AFP.

Climate change is a key factor, helping to create warmer, drier conditions for fires to spread and burn.

The report, which looked at extreme wildfires from March 2024 to February 2025, found that catastrophic infernos in Los Angeles and parts of South America are two to three times more likely due to climate change.

Warming also burned the area 25 to 35 times more during these events, the authors said.

Global temperatures in 2024 were the warmest on record, above 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time.

Last year, millions of hectares of forest and farmland were swept away in Canada, the western parts of the United States and the Amazon, as well as the world’s largest tropical wetland, shared by Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.

Worldwide, wildfires killed 100 people in Nepal, 34 in South Africa and 31 in Los Angeles, the authors said, with smoke drifting across continents and causing dangerous levels of air pollution far from the heat of the flames.

Globally, the report states that more than eight billion tons of CO are burned₂ About 10% on average since 2003 in the period 2024-2025.

On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization warned that the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere last year was the largest ever recorded.

The WMO expressed “significant concern” that land and oceans are becoming unable to share₂releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

He warned that the planet could witness a so-called “vicious cycle” of climate feedback.₂while warm oceans cannot co-absorb as much₂ from the air

25 2025 AFP