Burned area 1982–2018

Fire affects an estimated four million square kilometres of Earth’s land surface each year, releasing aerosols and greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Understanding the influence on atmospheric chemistry and representing these emissions in future climate predictions however, is complex and remains poorly understood. To improve the situation, a team of scientists have used satellite observations to map the pattern of burn patches resulting from biomass burning on a global scale and over several decades, covering 1982–2018. The graph shows the burned area of FireCCILT11 (1982–2018), which shows consistency against global MODIS burned area products FireCCI51 and MCD64A1. Note: data for 1994 and 2019 are omitted due to quality issues of AVHRR-LTDR data.

Read full story: New dataset to analyse global fire trends