As the headlines, the death tolls and the billion-dollar losses from wildfires have stacked up around the world, so too have the rising temperatures – fuelled by the climate crisis – that create tinderbox conditions.
When the researchers looked at areas with a high risk of fires close to populations, they found this deadly combination on 10% of the planet’s land surface.
Those areas included January’s fires in Los Angeles, with direct losses estimated at US$65bn – “likely the costliest fire disaster in history” – and the 2024 fires in Valparaíso, Chile, that claimed 135 lives.
Of 200 fires in the past 44 years, half of the fires that cost US$1bn or more were in the last decade