Profile coming soon.
Plenary 3: Climate extremes, impacts and adaptation
The State of Wildfires
Abstract: Extreme wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense, devastating societies and ecosystems worldwide. The 2023 and 2024 fire seasons were particularly active, with catastrophic events across Canada, Greece, the Amazon, the Pantanal, and Congo, followed by major blazes in Los Angeles in early 2025. Media, NGOs, fire management agencies, communities, and policymakers all want urgent, evidence-based answers to the same questions: How much of this is driven by climate change? What is the role of land management and human activity? Who bears the brunt of the damage, and how can we better prepare for a hotter, more fire-prone future? Understanding the causes of today’s disasters is vital to support fair responses for communities suffering climate-related impacts and to inform future adaptation decisions in a changing climate.
The State of Wildfires project explicitly links extreme event attribution with impacts and future projections, anchoring our outlooks in evidence from recent fires. We integrate observed data, attribution analyses, and projections to trace drivers of burned area across diverse landscapes—from tropical rainforests to temperate ecosystems and urban–wildland interfaces such as those in the UK and California. Climate fingerprints are present in almost all of these fires, though not always acting alone; fire’s often interact with local land management, socioeconomic pressures, and ignition patterns to shape the severity and spread of wildfires. Future projections indicate a world where such extreme fire events become increasingly frequent and severe. While cutting emissions will help, even meeting the Paris Agreement targets will not fully mitigate their impacts. This means that, under our most ambitious emission pathways, adaptation to more burning remains essential.
By situating attribution results alongside future projections , this integrated approach provides a human-centred and scientifically robust framework to understand fire risks, support resilience building, and inform evidence-based strategies to reduce risk and guide adaptation to address both the causes and consequences of wildfires in an increasingly fiery world.