Wildfires can not only start earlier than usual in certain regions, but they also tend to be far more intense when high temperatures, drought, wind, and dense plant fuel align. While climate change is not the direct trigger for most ignitions, it significantly raises the likelihood that a single spark, lightning strike, or agricultural burn will escalate into a major, uncontrollable blaze. In this article, we examine why climate change is intensifying wildfires and look at the key measures that can be taken to prevent them.
What will I learn from this article?
Wildfires can stem from natural causes or human activity, whether accidental or deliberate. However, the scientific community has observed that global warming is creating weather conditions far more conducive to extreme wildfires across numerous regions.
Between March 2024 and February 2025, around 3.7 million square kilometres of land burned worldwide. Although total global burned area fell below the historical average, emissions remained exceptionally high due to the sheer intensity of major fire events recorded in South America and Canada.
A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in 2024 confirmed that the planet’s most extreme wildfires have more than doubled in frequency, occurring overwhelmingly in boreal and temperate coniferous forests.
Climate change primarily influences fire behavior by drying out vegetation, lengthening risk periods, and enabling faster propagation. Across the western United States, various studies have documented a marked lengthening of the wildfire season compared to the 1970s. The IPCC projects that under high warming scenarios, both burned area and wildfire frequency will rise in many regions. At 4 °C of global warming, the report estimates a 50% to 70% increase in global burned area and a roughly 30% jump in wildfire frequency compared to present-day levels.
These fires represent a severe threat to the environment, biodiversity, and nearby communities. They can destroy vast swathes of vegetation, severely disrupting ecosystem services and causing habitat degradation for countless species. A study published in Science warned that altered fire regimes, spanning shifts in frequency, intensity, and distribution, now threaten more than 4,400 terrestrial and freshwater species worldwide.
Increased soil erodibility resulting from the loss of plant cover can compromise both water quality and supply by causing ground-level changes that prevent proper water infiltration. Furthermore, the release of massive volumes of smoke and ash contributes heavily to air pollution, posing serious risks to human health.
The 2023 Canadian fire season illustrates the staggering scale these emissions can reach. Researchers estimated that those blazes released around 647 million tonnes of carbon, an amount comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of India.
Community involvement
In Portugal, 91% of forest land is privately owned according to the ICNF—well above the European average of around 60%, and split into highly fragmented holdings, many well below 10 hectares. This fragmentation, combined with landowner inactivity, severely limits the capacity for proactive forest management to prevent fires.
To address this, the country established Forest Intervention Zones (ZIFs), a legal framework that groups smallholders under a single management entity to promote sustainable forest management and protection against extreme fires.
France, meanwhile, legally obliges property owners to clear brush and undergrowth surrounding their lands. The government created digital maps to show owners whether their land is affected and where the boundaries of their preventive responsibilities lie. In Spain, specialized forest cleanup crews clear undergrowth, prune trees, and create firebreaks—key interventions for preventing extreme wildfires and safeguarding ecosystem biodiversity.
Biomass management for fire prevention
Reducing biomass is vital for wildfire prevention because it breaks fuel continuity and creates a vegetation structure that enhances fire management capabilities. Consequently, many European countries, including Spain, have turned to prescribed grazing to make landscapes more fire-resilient. However, for extensive grazing to be effective at a landscape scale, it requires a substantial number of herders directed toward strategic zones.
In southern Spain, Andalusia has launched a targeted grazing program to reduce biomass in specific high-risk areas and maintain a forest structure suited for fire prevention. To incentivize herders to move their livestock into these strategic zones, financial compensation is provided as a payment for environmental services.
Another way to create economic incentives is by finding a commercial output for forestry residue. Spain currently utilizes only around 35% of its forests' annual timber growth, compared to the European average of 61%. Much of the debris left behind from pruning, thinning, and other silvicultural work remains on the forest floor, swelling the fuel load available to feed a fire.
Energy biomass can help balance this equation by adding value to materials whose removal otherwise incurs a cost. The Logrosán biomass plant operated by ACCIONA illustrates this model: each year, it will utilize roughly 275,000 tonnes of agricultural and forestry residue—a volume equivalent to clearing over 20,000 hectares of forest—to generate around 380 GWh of renewable electricity.
Prescribed grazing and biomass utilization thus follow the same core logic: converting preventive land management into an economically viable activity.
AI to prevent forest fires
In Turkey, roughly 230,000 km² of the country's 783,562 km² total land area is forested, mostly under public ownership. Regrettably, vast swathes of these forests burned across the Mediterranean region in 2021 during the worst wildfire season in the country's history.
A defining characteristic of wildfires is their unpredictability. Human activity, terrain, and weather conditions all influence the likelihood of an outbreak. To better predict hotspots and deploy resources more effectively, the World Economic Forum's Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, KoçDigital, TMAF, and Deloitte launched the FireAId initiative.
FireAId is an interactive fire-risk map powered by AI algorithms. It provides crucial insights to help authorities prepare for and respond to blazes, offering simulation tools that process fire size, predict spread, and evaluate suppression tactics. The results are proving positive: the initial pilot in Turkey achieved an 80% accuracy rate in predicting wildfire ignitions.
Ultimately, prevention, rapid response, and sound forest management will be essential to combating wildfires. Beyond curbing illegal deforestation and promoting sustainable farming practices, several experts highlight ancient Indigenous practices of controlled, low-intensity burns as an effective strategy to clear dry undergrowth and leaf litter, helping prevent catastrophic wildfires before they start.
Sources:
- https://efi.int/sites/default/files/files/publication-bank/2024/PPRIF_02_2024_ES.pdf
- https://ethic.es/2023/05/empiezan-antes-los-incendios-forestales/
- https://www.sostenibilidad.com/medio-ambiente/perdida-biodiversidad/
- https://elpais.com/america-futura/2024-10-11/sudamerica-cada-vez-mas-seca-mas-caliente-y-mas-inflamable.html
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02452-2