Dangerous days have nearly tripled in past 45 years – and increase largely driven by human-made warming
The number of days when the weather gets hot, dry and windy – ideal to spark extreme wildfires – has nearly tripled in the past 45 years across the globe, with the trend increasing even higher in the Americas, a new study shows.
And more than half of that increase is caused by human-caused climate change, researchers calculated.
What this means is that as the world warms, more places across the globe are prone to wildfires because of increasingly synchronous fire weather, which is when multiple places have the right conditions to go up in smoke.
Countries may not have enough resources to put out all the fires, and help will not be as likely to come from neighbors busy with their own flames, according to the authors of a study in Wednesday’s Science Advances.
In 1979 and for the next 15 years, the world averaged 22 synchronous fire weather days a year for flames that stayed within large global regions, the study found. In 2023 and 2024, it was up to more than 60 days a year.
“These sorts of changes that we have seen increase the likelihood in a lot of areas that there will be fires that are going to be very challenging to suppress,” said study co-author John Abatzoglou, a fire scientist at the University of California, Merced.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin speaks at EPA Headquarters on February 18, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
Repealing the endangerment finding, they wrote, “is contrary to science and the public interest.”
More than 1,000 scientists and other experts on Tuesday sent a letter to US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin explaining why they “strenuously object” to his effort to repeal the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” which has enabled federal climate regulations over the past 15 years.
Amid mounting fears that he would take such action, Zeldin in late July unveiled the rule to rescind the landmark legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—part of Republican President Donald Trump’s broader pro-polluter agenda.
“As climate scientists, public health experts, and economists, we can attest to the indisputable scientific evidence of human-caused climate change, its harmful impacts on people’s health and well-being, and the devastating costs it is imposing on communities across the nation and around the world,” states the new letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This explicit attempt to undermine or weaken these findings, as well as the critical regulations linked to them, is contrary to science and the public interest.”
“We also strongly oppose the EPA’s reckless dismissal of established climate science as part of its proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, including the agency’s heavy reliance on an unscientific study commissioned by the Department of Energy. This report is rife with inaccuracies, deliberately cherry-picks and mischaracterizes data, and has not undergone a rigorous scientific review process,” the letter continues, echoing an expert review of the government report from earlier this month.
🚨NEW: Scientists from nearly every state, DC, and Puerto Rico are calling out Trump's Environmental Protection Agency for failing to fulfill their core duties: protect the environment and public health.
Citing major US and global analyses, along with thousands of independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies, the letter stresses that “the scientific evidence on human-caused climate change and its consequences was unequivocal in 2009 and, since that time, has become even more dire and compelling.”
It says that “based on the best available science,” scientists know:
Climate change poses severe harms to human health and well-being;
Climate change is clearly increasing the likelihood of extreme events; and
The economic toll of climate change is rising.
Harms to human health and well-being include higher rates of heat-related deaths, increased spread of some infectious diseases, and decreased food and water safety due to climate-fueled extreme weather events, the letter says. It also highlights that, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “billion-dollar disasters in the United States are on the rise, driven by a combination of climate factors and increased development in disaster-prone areas.”
Despite such findings, the Trump administration is making various moves to boost the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry and the president withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement—again—when he returned to office in January. Parties to the 2015 climate agreement aim to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
🌎🧪Over 1,000+ scientists joined together to defend the EPA's Endangerment Finding, and you have SIX DAYS to make your voice heard too.
“The world stands on the cusp of breaching the 1.5°C (2.7°F) mark on a long-term basis, the global average temperature increase above preindustrial levels that scientists have long warned about,” the experts noted Tuesday. “Communities across the nation are already dealing with devastating and costly climate impacts, that are set to worsen as global warming accelerates. Humanity’s window to act to stave off some of the worst impacts of climate change is fast closing; any further delay is harmful and costly.”
“We urge you to stop dismantling critical climate regulations and evading EPA’s responsibility by pushing disinformation about climate science and impacts,” they concluded. “Instead, we call on you to act with urgency to help address this pressing challenge by limiting heat-trapping emissions. People across the nation are relying on the EPA to fulfill its mission to protect public health and the environment.”
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
As the U.S. faces another potentially record heat wave this week, the Middle East and Europe’s Mediterranean have endured extreme temperatures that have proven deadly.
The big picture: Multiple heat-related deaths have been reported in Greece during the country’s earliest heat wave on record and Jordan’s official news agency said Sunday “14 Jordanian pilgrims died and 17 others were missing” in the searing heat while on the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Tourists outside the Acropolis during high temperatures in Athens, Greece, on June 12, when authorities announced the closure of the ancient site for five hours due to soaring temperatures that also shut schools. Photo: Hilary Swift/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The heat waves sweeping these regions this month have been made “at least five times more likely” because of human-caused climate change, per new Climate Central analysis.
Context: Climate Central’s analysis is based on the group’s Climate Shift Index (CSI), which compares observed or forecast temperatures with simulations of the same weather conditions minus excess atmospheric greenhouse gases, per Alex Fitzpatrick.
The idea is to compare real-world conditions with what might have been the case had human-caused climate change been absent.
Saudi Arabia had a CSI of 5, meaning that human-caused climate change made a given daily average temperature five times more likely as of Monday morning. Greece, which has endured two weeks of extreme heat, had a CSI of 5 last week and 2 on Monday. Parts of Turkey had a CSI of 5.
A joint report by UN and European Union agencies found in April that Europe’s temperatures are rising about twice as fast the global average due to human-caused climate change — making it the fastest-warming continent on Earth.
