It has ravaged California since mid-July and has already swallowed up more than 3,000 square kilometers of forests and homes: Dixie Fire is the second largest fire in the history of the American state. In Siberia, 15,000 square kilometers of forests were destroyed this summer. Yet studies show that the total number of fires on Earth has not increased for fifteen years. The areas burned on the whole planet are even tending to decrease. How to explain it?
Analysis of satellite images, as well as data collected by NASA, can explain these phenomena. With climate change, fires are changing in nature: they appear in areas that were previously relatively untouched and are increasingly violent.
Sources:
– Temperature record in Siberia
– Scientific article on the evolution of burnt surfaces on Earth (2013)
– European data Effis on burnt surfaces and detected fires
– IPCC report on climate change in Europe
– Drought data in the United States
– Data on burnt surfaces in the United States
– GFED data (Global Fire Emissions Database)
– Scientific study of the impact of climate change on fires in California (2019)
– Scientific article on temperatures in Siberia (2021)