Nothing speaks more to the hell that climate change is creating on Earth than the wildfires tearing through our landscapes. In recent days, Spain and Portugal have battled ferocious blazes, killing at least six and charring an area twice the size of London, as Europe suffers its worst wildfire season on record, surpassing 1 million hectares burned.
Climate change plays a huge role by creating hotter, drier and windier conditions — perfect for ignition. Cycles between extreme wet and dry also provide far more fuel by sparking bursts of vegetation that then dries out. That said, the global picture on wildfires is not as simple as climate crisis equals more wildfires.
While fires have always served a purpose in nature — helping to spur new growth, release seeds and return nutrients to the soil in certain landscapes — Matthew Jones, a physical geographer and wildfire specialist at the University of East Anglia, said that blazes are cropping up in new areas that are not as well-adapted and at a ferocity not seen before.
There has been a dramatic shift in the extent of fires in forests, for example, where they are becoming more regular and destructive. That rings alarm bells. Boreal forest fires, like the ones seen in Canada in 2023, release vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and have been so intense that the ecosystems have struggled to recover.
Another sign that wildfires are getting worse is the increase in human exposures. A study, on which Jones was a coauthor, published last week in Science, revealed that the number of people directly affected by wildfires surged nearly 40 percent from 2002 to 2021. That is despite a 26 percent decline, driven by agricultural expansion in African savannahs, in the total global burned area.
Africa accounts for the bulk of these exposures, as agriculture creates jobs and communities in fire-prone rural areas. In Europe and Oceania, rural depopulation has reduced exposure to wildfires, but at the same time contributed, alongside climatic trends, to making fires more ferocious, as the land is not managed as it was before — providing more fuel for potential blazes. The western US, on the other hand, has gotten a rising rural population as well as more common and intense wildfires, which spells bad news all around.
Even this 40 percent jump in human exposure is likely to be an underestimate of the true impacts of wildfires, as the study does not factor in other indirect and long-term impacts, such as economic losses and health effects. With smoke from the Iberian Peninsula causing hazy skies as far away as the UK, it is clear that the consequences are not contained to a fire’s perimeter.
On those health impacts, by the way, these are much worse than originally believed. Another study published earlier this month found that death tolls from short-term exposure to fine particulates were underestimated by a whopping 93 percent.
Thankfully, innovations are coming online that would offer a step change in both research and firefighting. Earth Fire Alliance, a non-profit focused on providing better wildfire data, has developed FireSat, a purpose-built constellation of satellites which would be able to spot burning before it turns into raging blazes that current satellites can pick up only when they have covered hundreds of square meters. FireSat is able to pick up fires the size of a room and would be able to provide updates on their progress every 20 minutes.
Brian Collins, executive director of Earth Fire Alliance, said that the tool could be used in different ways. In densely populated, fire-prone areas, firefighters would be able to tackle blazes while they are easier to put out. In other more open areas, some fires might be natural, so authorities would be able to monitor them and make intelligent decisions about whether to intervene, or where to place resources on standby in case the flames become problematic.
Because the data are so much higher in resolution than what scientists are used to, it opens up the opportunity to gain a much better understanding of how fires start and spread, which could eventually lead to more sophisticated fire-prediction systems.
Funded by donations from organizations including Google Research, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the first purpose-built satellite is up and running, with a number of early adopters including the Portuguese Agency for Integrated Rural Fire Management, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection already learning how to use the system. Three more satellites are set to be launched in in time for the start of the northern hemisphere’s fire season next year. Eventually, the plan is to have 50 satellites orbiting the planet.
However, Jones said that we cannot rely on spotting every single fire and being in the right place to stop it. Preventing them from starting in the first place is also important, by monitoring the buildup of fuel — flammable vegetation — and building in firebreaks.
In other words, we need both the vaccine and the cure.
Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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