Wildfires on a changing planet

Haas, O., Prentice, I. C. and Harrison, S. P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5687-1903 (2026) Wildfires on a changing planet. Nature Communications, 17. 1599. ISSN 2041-1723 doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-68176-4

Abstract/Summary

The distribution of wildfires on Earth will change as climate, land-use, and vegetation change. We use global empirical models of burnt area, fire size and fire intensity to explore future wildfire trajectories under ~1.5 and 3-4 °C warming with middle of the road future socio-economic conditions. Even under ~1.5 °C warming we find a change in wildfire patterns by the end of the 21st century with reduced burning in tropical regions driven by changes in human activity but larger and more intense wildfires in extra-tropical regions driven by changes in climate and CO2. With low climate change mitigation, burnt areas increase greatly across all vegetation types, overwhelming the current global decline. These findings suggest that even with ambitious climate change mitigation, current fire-suppression policies will fail in much of the world and mitigation scenarios that rely on expanding forest areas will be unrealistic unless they are designed with wildfire risks in mind.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/129457
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41467-025-68176-4
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science > Department of Geography and Environmental Science
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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