Introduction: a world on fire

Summary

In November 2018 wildfire destroyed Paradise. The town in California, that is. The so called “Camp Fire” killed 85 people in the town and surrounding area. That year also, fires burned large parts of Siberia, New Zealand and Canada, killed motorists in Portugal and Greece and eradicated crucial ecosystems in Tasmania.

These forest fires are getting hotter and bigger and are burning more places. More than ten million acres of forest burned in the United States for the first time in 2015, and then again in 2017, and in 2020. By late June in 2023, halfway through the fire season, more forest area had burned in Canada than in any previous complete season. The smoke from these wildfires in Canada caused air quality health alerts in New York and elsewhere in the United States.

In July 2023 media reports of wildfire on the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean showed tourists struggling to escape the flames. A record-breaking hot summer in the region set the scene for wildfire. Heat records were also being broken widely elsewhere, notably in Iran and in India. In August wildfire destroyed the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui the other side of the world becoming the deadliest blaze in modern US history.

The power of these fires when they get going is staggering; temperatures get so hot that trees explode and timber-framed houses and their contents are vaporized (Vaillant 2023). Temperatures over 500°C loft smoke into the stratosphere, generating pyrocumulonimbus clouds and fire-driven weather systems. The level of destruction, of trees, houses, and whatever else gets in the way of these fires is increasing. Fighting fires requires larger and larger efforts; insurance costs for lost property are rising too.

Climate change is clearly making those wildfires worse as droughts and extreme temperatures extend fire seasons. The winter of 2019 was unusually hot and dry in Australia; its wildfires have become an ever-increasing hazard. The following year brought even more extensive wildfires and a terrible toll on wildlife and property. Dramatic pictures of people being evacuated off a beach grabbed the world's attention.