Wildfires in 2025
May 31, 2026
Globally, fires in 2025 burned the second-lowest area on record since 2002 and emitted the third-lowest CO2 total. Yet, a third successive year of extreme wildfire emissions prevailed in Canada, and catastrophic fires in Los Angeles, South Korea and Europe killed over 90 people and forced over 300,000 evacuations.
Key points
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In Canada’s boreal forests, 2025 was the third successive year of extreme wildfire, with the total CO2 emissions during 2023–2025 exceeding the combined emissions of the preceding 15 years, highlighting the growing long-term effect of extreme burning in carbon-rich ecosystems.
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January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles killed 31 people, destroyed almost 12,000 homes, and forced over 150,000 evacuations, ranking among the top 5 costliest natural disasters in world history with an estimated US $140 billion in losses. Fast-moving fires of extreme intensity, particularly at fuel-rich wildland–urban interfaces, are hard to control, with deadly and costly consequences.
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Repeated drought and heat extremes drove widespread and societally disruptive wildfires across Europe, causing 28 deaths and over 120,000 evacuations, prompting six countries to simultaneously request shared firefighting resources through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, and producing the UK’s first ‘megafire’ that exceeded 10,000 ha.
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The authors declare that the main data discussed in this article are available in refs. 5,6 and at https://www.emdat.be/.
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Acknowledgements
M.W.J. was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NEV01417X1). C.A.K. was supported by the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture [award number 2022-67019-36435]. JTA was supported by NSF under award number OAI-2019762. PMF was supported by National Funds by FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the projects UID/04033/2025: Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences and LA/P/0126/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0126/2020). The authors and their organizations remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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Jones, M.W., Abatzoglou, J.T., Burton, C. et al. Wildfires in 2025.
Nat Rev Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-026-00793-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-026-00793-z
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