According to a new study published in Nature Climate Change, climate change increased global burnt areas by more than 15% caused by wildfires between 2003 and 2019. According to the research, the influence of climate change on wildfire activity has consistently increased by 0.22 per cent every year worldwide. Central Australia has witnessed the greatest growth, according to the findings. This new study is one of the first to quantify the effect of climate change on global fire regimes, providing critical information about how rising temperatures and drier conditions exacerbate wildfire hazards.

Chantelle Burton, a Met Office Hadley Centre researcher and joint lead author of the paper, stated, “Our study demonstrates that when fires do occur, the influence of climate change with drier and warmer weather conditions is increasingly significant.” Despite earlier research relating climate change and wildfires, this study provides a concrete estimate of how much climate change has contributed to burned areas worldwide.

Also Read: Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event Becomes Most Widespread, Exceeding 2014-2017 Levels By 11%

Regional Fire Patterns and the Impact of Human Activity

While Climate change has increased global burnt areas and expanded the scorched areas, the trend is inconsistent across regions. The researchers named Australia, South America, Western North America, and Siberia critical hotspots. Climate change caused a 22 per cent increase in the median burnt area in northern Australia between 2003 and 2019. Similarly, southern South America increased by 30%, west Siberia by 18%, and western North America by 15%.

Seppe Lampe, a PhD researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and co-author of the study, explained that certain places, particularly sparsely inhabited woodland areas, are poorly prepared to deal with bigger flames. If warm, dry weather becomes more common, it may result in more devastating fires in these places. In contrast, heavily populated areas frequently benefit from increased firefighting operations, which can keep wildfires from spreading uncontrollably.

Surprisingly, while climate change is causing increased burned regions, human activity has had the opposite effect. The study discovered that land-use changes, particularly agricultural expansion, have resulted in a global reduction in total burnt area, particularly in savanna regions. A 2017 research article published in Science backs up this claim, demonstrating that agricultural activities reduced scorched areas worldwide by roughly 25% between 1998 and 2015. This human influence has reduced global scorched areas by 19%, offsetting the consequences of climate change in some locations.

The researchers utilised worldwide fire-vegetation models to determine how climatic change and socioeconomic factors have influenced the global burnt area in recent decades. Their findings revealed that between 2003 and 2019, climate change caused 15.8 per cent more scorched areas than would have occurred in a world without climate change. Despite a 5% reduction in global scorched area owing to human activity, the balance may alter as climate change exacerbates fire hazards in the future decades.

Also Read: Delhi Air Pollution Levels: Stubble Burning Contribution To PM2.5 Pollution May Rise To 2.8%

Urgent Need for Climate Mitigation and Adaptation

The study’s findings show that, while human activities now have a greater impact on reducing burnt areas, climate change’s impact is fast increasing. Lampe observed, “For the time being, human action has a greater impact on reducing burnt areas than climate change has on increasing them. However, we discover that the effect of climate change is increasing (0.2 per cent each year), implying that in the coming decades, this equilibrium will reverse.”

Although the total worldwide change in burnt areas is minimal, the impacts of climate change are already outpacing human efforts in certain areas, including central Australia, southern South America, and western Siberia. The researchers warn that the impact of climate change is likely to worsen shortly, making it necessary to implement aggressive climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives to reduce the global hazard of wildfires.

Also Read: Global Environmental Leaders Convene In Colombia For UN Biodiversity Conference