Global CO2 emissions from forest fires increase by 60 per cent
Thursday 17 October 2024

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.

Significant increases were seen more broadly across the extratropical forests and amounted to an additional half a billion tonnes of CO2 per year, with the epicentre of emissions shifting away from tropical forests and towards the extratropics.

…