UMD-GLAD Study on Increasing Wildfires Covered by The New York Times
Led by Research Professor Peter Potapov, the paper "Unprecedentedly High Global Forest Disturbance Due to Fire in 2023 and 2024" was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and featured in The New York Times.
The New York Times: 'Climate Change Is Making Fire Weather Worse for World’s Forests'
Forest fires are on the rise globally. An increase in severe fire weather is largely responsible.
In 2023 and 2024, the hottest years on record, more than 78 million acres of forests burned around the globe. The fires sent veils of smoke and several billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, subjecting millions of people to poor air quality.
Extreme forest-fire years are becoming more common because of climate change, new research suggests. ...
The area of forest canopy lost to fire during 2023 and 2024 was at least two times greater than the annual average of the previous nearly two decades, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers used imagery from the LANDSAT satellite network to determine how tree cover had changed from 2002 to 2024, and compared that with satellite detections of fire activity to see how much canopy loss was because of fire. ...
The New Tork Times Article in Full
Image: Screenshot of The New York Times Article "Climate Change Is Making Fire Weather Worse for World’s Forests."
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