Wildfires have been in the news lately. Indeed, since there are always wildfires burning somewhere in the world they always will be in the news. And as we point out in our video on the LA wildfires the people whose job it is to manage them would much rather blame climate change than their own failures. That story didn’t hold up in LA, but what about in the world as a whole? Er, not there either. H/t Our World in Data the trend in area burned is down, not up, for the past 20 years:
They got the data from the Global Wildfire Information System. (If you click on the link you’ll see a page with two columns of headings; click on the Go to the Charts button on the left). The trend for Europe looks like this:
Whereas for North America it looks like this:
There you can see the exceptional 2023 fire year, and the way it stands out against the downward trend in the number of fires up to that point. South America, home of the Amazon rainforest that supposedly burned up in 2019, looks like this:
You get the idea. Wildfires happen every year in lots of places, some years are worse than others, and next time someone tries to tell you climate change is making them worse and worse, tell them to #Lookitup.
I remember many decades ago, an ABC radio; Australian Broadcasting Commission report that said the majority of fires in Australia were caused by out of control burnoffs to prevent fire, oops. I wonder how that little gem translates to the rest of the world?
The fact that some years are worse than others has to do with dead wood. The longer the time between burnoffs or naturally occurring fires, the more detritus there is causing, eventually a bigger burn. Australian indigenous people's are, finally, acknowledged for their timely cool weather burnoffs in a mosaic pattern that increases grasses, and encourages new seedling, something to learn there for county fire chiefs.
Oooooh the injustice of it all!