"Wildfires tore through central Chile last year, killing 133 people. In California, 18,000 buildings were destroyed in 2018 causing US$16bn (A$24bn, 12bn) in damage. Portugal, Greece, Algeria and Australia have all felt the grief and the economic pain in recent years. As the headlines, the death tolls and the billion dollar losses from wildfires have stacked up around the world, so too have the rising temperatures fuelled by the climate crisis that create tinderbox conditions."
"For the first time scientists say they have shown unambiguously that the numbers of societally disastrous wildfires the ones that hit economies hard and take lives have increased around the world as global heating bites. We're witnessing a fundamental shift in how wildfires impact society, said Australian scientist Dr Calum Cunningham, who led research published in the journal Science. Climate change sets the stage for these disasters. Looking at the 200 costliest fires between 1980 and 2023 pulled from a private database maintained by global re-insurer Munich Re the trends were clear."
Major wildfires across multiple countries have caused substantial fatalities and economic losses, with examples including 133 deaths in central Chile and US$16bn in California building damage in 2018. Analysis of the 200 costliest fires since 1980 shows 43% occurred in the last decade and half of the billion-dollar fires happened in that period. The frequency of fires causing 10 or more deaths tripled between 1980 and 2023 while population rose 1.8 times. Temperatures, atmospheric dryness, and vegetation dryness worsened significantly, and half of the wildfires occurred under the worst 0.1% recorded fire-danger conditions.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]