the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
State of Wildfires 2023–24
Abstract. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires globally, with significant impacts on society and the environment. However, our understanding of the global distribution of extreme fires remains skewed, primarily influenced by media coverage and regional research concentration. This inaugural State of Wildfires report systematically analyses fire activity worldwide, identifying extreme events from the March 2023–February 2024 fire season. We assess the causes, predictability, and attribution of these events to climate change and land use, and forecast future risks under different climate scenarios. During the 2023–24 fire season, 3.9 million km2 burned globally, slightly below the average of previous seasons, but fire carbon (C) emissions were 16 % above average, totaling 2.4 Pg C. This was driven by record emissions in Canadian boreal forests (over 9 times the average) and dampened by reduced activity in African savannahs. Notable events included record-breaking wildfire extent and emissions in Canada, the largest recorded wildfire in the European Union (Greece), drought-driven fires in western Amazonia and northern parts of South America, and deadly fires in Hawai’i (100 deaths) and Chile (131 deaths). Over 232,000 people were evacuated in Canada alone, highlighting the severity of human impact. Our analyses revealed that multiple drivers were needed to cause areas of extreme fire activity. In Canada and Greece a combination of high fire weather and an abundance of dry fuels increased the probability of fires by 4.5-fold and 1.9–4.1-fold, respectively, whereas fuel load and direct human suppression often modulated areas with anomalous burned area. The fire season in Canada was predictable three months in advance based on the fire weather index, whereas events in Greece and Amazonia had shorter predictability horizons. Formal attribution analyses indicated that the probability of extreme events has increased significantly due to anthropogenic climate change, with a 2.9–3.6-fold increase in likelihood of high fire weather in Canada and a 20.0–28.5-fold increase in Amazonia. By the end of the century, events of similar magnitude are projected to occur 2.22–9.58 times more frequently in Canada under high emission scenarios. Without mitigation, regions like Western Amazonia could see up to a 2.9-fold increase in extreme fire events. For the 2024–25 fire season, seasonal forecasts highlight moderate positive anomalies in fire weather for parts of western Canada and South America, but no clear signal for extreme anomalies is present in the forecast. This report represents our first annual effort to catalogue extreme wildfire events, explain their occurrence, and predict future risks. By consolidating state-of-the-art wildfire science and delivering key insights relevant to policymakers, disaster management services, firefighting agencies, and land managers, we aim to enhance society’s resilience to wildfires and promote advances in preparedness, mitigation, and adaptation.
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Status: open (until 04 Jul 2024)
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CC1: 'Review period', Robert Gieseke, 13 Jun 2024
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The discussion has started on 13 Jun 2024, the review period end is listed as open until 04 Jul 2024.
This is only 3 weeks, the peer review overview states that the review period is 5 weeks (https://www.earth-system-science-data.net/peer_review/interactive_review_process.html#opendiscussion).
Given that the paper has 124 pages, is there a specific reason for the shortened review period?Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-218-CC1 -
RC1: 'Comment on essd-2024-218', Piers M. Forster, 21 Jun 2024
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This is a very ambitious and exciting project. The authors are to be applauded for the comprehensiveness of what will hopefully become an annual effort. The strengths are the consistent approaches, the regional expert panel assessment, the efforts at attribution for key wildfires based on the COnFire and PoF models and the future outlook. The authors are also open about some of the issues and limitations of the first assessment.
The online assets on Zenodo are really comprehensive and clear. The supplement nicely details extra figures and extended methods which i found useful
I outline some considerations below.
1. The authors state in the abstract that global wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity. I thought this was debated and depends on the definition used? I thought that biomass burning has been decreasing in topical regions and some longer term datasets showed more fires in past decades going back further than the last 20 years, the focus of these datasets. I think in this first paper it would be really worthwhile to address this debate head on as I expect the paper to be widely read.
2. Related to 1, I wondered whether any global indexes could be perhaps be presented in a key figure and discussed. Although, I understand the regional focus.
3. The expert panel is a really nice idea, it might be nice to have some more information on how it made its decisions and what data it used.
4. Section 3, it would be useful to specify the averaging period used for "higher than average" statements etc.
5. Table 2 repeats Africa
6. Section 4 might additionally briefly discuss the role of PM2.5 and ozone from fires on ecosystem health?
e.g. Tian, C. G., Yue, X., Zhu, J., Liao, H., Yang, Y., Lei, Y. D., Zhou, X. Y., Zhou, H., Ma, Y., and Cao, Y.: Fire-climate interactions through the aerosol radiative effect in a global chemistry-climate-vegetation model, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 22, 12353-12366, 10.5194/acp-22-12353-2022, 2022.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-218-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2024-218', David Carlson, 26 Jun 2024
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Great team, good idea, nice effort! Manuscript needs abundant change and improvement before it qualifies for ESSD.
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RC3: 'Comment on essd-2024-218', Marco Turco, 27 Jun 2024
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Dear Authors,
Firstly, I would like to extend my warm congratulations on your comprehensive assessment of the state of extreme wildfires for 2023-24. This manuscript represents a significant and valuable contribution to the understanding of wildfires, and I believe it holds great potential for impactful publication after addressing a few minor revisions and additions. You can find my detailed comments attached to this review.
Data sets
Update of: The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed and direction N. Andela and M. W. Jones https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11400062
State of Wildfires 2023-24: Anomalies in Burned Area, Fire Emissions, and Individual Fire Characteristics by Continent, Biome, Country, and Administrative Region M. W. Jones et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11400540
State of Wildfires 2023-24: ConFire data D. I. Kelley et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11420743
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