The climate science behind wildfires: why are they getting worse?

We are in an emergency. Wildfires are raging across the world as scorching temperatures and dry conditions fuel the blazes that have cost lives and destroyed livelihoods.
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The combination of extreme heat, changes in our ecosystem and prolonged drought have in many regions led to the worst fires in almost a decade, and come after the IPCC handed down a damning landmark report on the climate crisis.

But technically, there are fewer wildfires than in the past – the problem now is that they are worse than ever and we are running out of time to act, as the Guardian's global environment editor, Jonathan Watts, explains

Heat, drought and fire: how climate dangers combine for a catastrophic ‘perfect storm’ ► https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/10/heat-drought-and-fire-how-climate-dangers-combine-for-a-catastrophic-perfect-storm

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This is a crisis.

If we were on a plane,
I think the pilot's control panel

would have several alarms going off.

Siberia, Usa, Turkey, Greece,
and Italy and Portugal in recent years.

Huge areas just going up in flames.
Everything being reduced to ash.

Scene after scene of hillsides ablaze.

Wildfires are in one sense
very very simple.

It just needs a spark
in dry conditions to set them off.

But in another sense
they're also very complex,

because the extent to which they spread

depends very much on
conditions in the ecosystem.

How much moisture is there
in the ground, in the air?

How long has it been
since there was last rainfall?

What kind of trees there are.

How dense is the biodiversity?

Fires tend to burn faster
when they're in a plantation

and there's just one type of tree.

There isn't much undergrowth from moss

and things like that,
that could absorb water.

You get what scientists are always
describing as tinderbox-like conditions.

Where it doesn't
take much to start the fire.

and then once the fire is started,
it spreads very, very quickly.

They can be set off by lighting strikes,
by barbecues, dropped cigarettes,

or by farmers who use fires
to clear land and then lose control.

Wildfires have always existed.

They are natural and they do
play a process in forest management.

But when you've just got plantations
or when everything has been dried out,

wildfires can spread
over enormous distances

very very quickly.

The meshing together

of lots of different plants and mosses,

and animals, and streams,

and all of these things
that create an eco system,

are actually very strong and resilient
when they're together.

When you strip that all away,

if you just take out
all of the biodiversity,

you're making the forest more vulnerable.

Once a fire has got
ahold of a monoculture,

if it's burnt a stretch of five trees,

the chances are, it can burn 5000 trees

because they're all planted in lines
at roughly the same distance.

Counter-intuitively,
there are actually fewer wildfires

than there were in the past

But what is happening is that there is
a different type of wildfire now.

We're seeing fewer fires,
but more intense ones.

Because fires are spreading to areas
where there's more fuel, more trees.

And when trees burn,

obviously much more
carbon is being released.

And they burn
much longer and much harder.

We've already had more than
one degree Celcius warming

since the industrial era
as the result of human emissions,

like exhaust fumes,

industrial releases from chimneys,

and deforestation.

And all these gases are being released

into the atmosphere
that's kind of cloaking the planet.

And then everything below it heats up.

We're seeing the water cycle change.

We're seeing the lands
dry out more frequently

and protracted periods
of high temperatures.

A kind of reinforcing
climate feedback mechanism

because as more fires burn more fuel,

they release more carbon
into the atmosphere

which means more global heating,

which means more fires.

We're going to have to
think more about natural defenses

because plantations and monocultures
are much more vulnerable to fire.

So we need to think
how we plant things

so that nature has a chance
of defending itself.

At the same time,
the best and biggest thing we can do

is reduce carbon emissions
as quickly as possible.

At the very least,
that buys more time

to look for solutions
and spreads out the impact.

It's very clear that fires are
getting worse because of climate change.

We're in an emergency.

And if we don't treat it as an emergency,

it's going to get worse.

We need to do
much more about it

much more quickly.