Every year, more than half of the global area burned by wildfire is in Africa

It’s often difficult to understand the scale of wildfires globally. That’s because most news coverage focuses on only a few countries.

News headlines might be filled with stories about large fires in Greece, Portugal, the United States, or Canada, but when we look at the data, the global total is no higher than usual.

This is because the global trend is so strongly dictated by the extent of fires in Africa, which we almost never hear about. As you can see in the chart, Africa experiences more than half of the burned area globally every year. In some years, it’s as much as two-thirds of the total.

Whether it’s a “high” or “low” year for wildfires globally largely reflects whether it’s a high or low year for Africa. These global trends don’t tell us much about the extent of wildfires in other regions.

Track global, regional, and country-level data on wildfires, which we update weekly →

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This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Every year, more than half of the global area burned by wildfire is in Africa” by Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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