Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele

Europe is full of buried explosives left over from 20th century wars, and wildfires are now reaching them more regularly.

Exclusive: As wildfires rage, Frank Elderson says more work needed to assess risk from collapse of ecosystem services

Wildfires used to die down and even stop at night with cooler temperatures and increased humidity. But a study released Friday says climate change is making burning weather more around the clock in North America because night is becoming warmer and drier. Canadian fire scientists say potential burning hours for fires have increased 36% in the last 50 years. California now has about 550 more fire-friendly hours a year than it did in the 1970s. North American summer nights are warming faster than days, evening relief is evaporating for forests and that means the area of land burned is soaring.

Extreme heat is breaking records around the world, with wildfires and poor air quality compounding the crisis, according to a report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released Thursday.

Human-caused climate change increased the likelihood and intensity of the hot, dry and windy conditions that fanned the flames of the recent devastating Southern California wildfires, a scientific study found. But the myriad of causes that go into the still smoldering fires are complex, so the level of global warming's fingerprints on weeks of burning appears relatively small compared to previous studies of killer heat waves, floods and droughts by the international team at World Weather Attribution. Tuesday's report, too rapid for peer-review yet, found global warming boosted the likelihood of high fire weather conditions in this month's fires by 35% and its intensity by 6%.

Wildfires that blazed around the world in 2024 helped to drive a record annual leap in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, surprising scientists. The data shows humanity is moving yet deeper into a dangerous world of supercharged extreme weather.

Extreme heat affecting nearly 23m people across US south-west and pushing Texas’s electrical grid to the limit.

Unprecedented wildfires in Canada and parts of Amazonia last year were at least three times more likely due to climate change and contributed to high levels of CO2 emissions from burning globally, according to the first edition of a new systematic annual review.

Blackened trees, dead animals and scorched earth – early wildfires have already devastated Brazil’s Pantanal and local people worry they may lose the battle to save them

Scientists warn of ‘scary’ feedback loop in which fires create more heating, which causes more fires worldwide