Researchers found climate change increased the number of days of weather conducive to triggering extreme fire events
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Humans exposed to wildfires have increased by 40 per cent in the past two decades, with climate change being responsible for a 54 per cent rise in extreme fire weather since 1979, according to a new study.
Population dynamics -- population growth and migration -- from 2002 to 2021 was found to account for 111.3 million exposures to wildfires, which forms 25.3 per cent of the world's population exposed to wildfires over the past two decades.
Findings published in the journal Science also reveal that Africa accounted for nearly all of the increase in humans exposed to wildfires (85 per cent), with significant increases in the Americas and Asia.
Researchers, led by those from the United Nations University-Institute for Water, Environment and Health, found climate change increased the number of days of weather conducive to triggering extreme fire events, "culminating in a (more than) 54 per cent increase in extreme fire weather from 1979 to 2022 globally, longer fire-weather seasons, and increased night-time flammability".
Human activity, such as changes in land use, have altered vegetation in many areas, making landscapes more flammable, the researchers said.
"While the human exposure to fires is rising, we saw that burned land is shrinking by 26 per cent," said co-author Amir AghaKouchak, Lead-Water, Climate and Infrastructure Risk at the United Nations University-Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The study analysed 18.6 million fire records from the global fire atlas (GFA) between 2002 and 2021.
"We show that the population directly exposed to wildland fires increased 40 per cent globally from 2002 to 2021 despite a 26 per cent decline in burned area," the authors wrote.
The researchers said addressing wildfire risks requires more than tracking burned areas, calling for a strengthening of resilience in the regions most exposed to fire.
Improved strategies in fire management tailored to local contexts, investments in fire-resilient infrastructure, and policies that address the growing overlap of human settlements and fire-prone landscapes, they said.
The authors said that while under five per cent of the world's land involves an interaction between uncultivated wildlands and humans (or 'wildland-urban interface'), nearly half the world's population resides in such areas.
"Wildfires are no longer seasonal or regional anomalies; they have become a global crisis, intensified by rising heatwaves, worsening droughts, and drastic land use changes," Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University-Institute for Water, Environment and Health, said.
By combining measures that address wildfire risks with global efforts to curb climate change, societies can better protect vulnerable populations and mitigate the escalating human toll of wildland fires, the authors said.
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