Are extreme wildfires the new normal?

The world is on fire—or at least it feels that way. Fires are burning in France, Spain, Canada, and Oregon. But here's the twist: globally, there are actually fewer wildfires and less land burning on average than in the past. That's the counterintuitive finding from Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist in California. The nuance, however, is stark. In North American forests, the typical fire now burns about three times more area than it did 30 or 40 years ago. And globally, extreme wildfire activity has more than doubled in the last two decades. So what's really going on?

The global paradox: fewer fires, but more extreme ones

The reason global fire numbers are down is that most of the land that burns every year isn't forest—it's grasslands, shrublands, and savannas. And those are burning less, mostly in Africa, which is a huge continent. That brings down the global average. But within that headline, regional trends diverge sharply. In North American forests, the trend is unmistakably toward more burning. Vegetation is drier, so when a spark catches, it's more likely to burn a larger area. Hausfather put it plainly: "The vegetation is drier, and so when a spark catches, it's more likely to burn a larger area."

Climate change as the accelerant