Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth
Author: Cunningham, Calum X.; Williamson, Grant J.; Bowman, David M. J. S. Description: Climate change is exacerbating wildfire conditions, but evidence is lacking for global trends in extreme fire activity itself. Here we identify energetically extreme wildfire events by calculating daily clusters of summed fire radiative power using 21 years of satellite data, revealing that the frequency of extreme events (>99.99th percentile) increased by 2.2-fold from 2003 to 2023, with the last 7 years including the 6 most extreme. Although the total area burned on Earth may be declining, our…
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