A major new study reveals that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from forest fires have surged by 60% globally since 2001, and almost tripled in some of the most climate-sensitive northern boreal forests.
The study, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and published today in Science, grouped areas of the world into ‘pyromes’ – regions where forest fire patterns are affected by similar environmental, human, and climatic controls – revealing the key factors driving recent increases in forest fire activity.
It is one of the first studies to look globally at the differences between forest and non-forest fires, and shows that in one of the largest pyromes, which spans boreal forests in Eurasia and North America, emissions from fires nearly tripled between 2001 and 2023.
