Overview
- The study published May 31 finds 2025 was the costliest year on record for wildfire damage, with more than 90 deaths, roughly 300,000 evacuations, about $140 billion in total losses from the Los Angeles event and roughly $40 billion insured losses for that single disaster.
- The Palisades and Eaton fires in the Los Angeles area in January 2025 were the single most destructive event, killing 31 people, destroying nearly 12,000 homes, forcing about 150,000 evacuations and exposing more than 10 million people to hazardous smoke.
- South Korea suffered its largest and deadliest wildfire outbreak in 2025, burning over 100,000 hectares and killing 32 people, and attribution work cited by the study found climate change roughly doubled the likelihood of the weather conditions that drove that outbreak.
- Global totals were misleading about risk because the area burned in 2025 was near historic lows and emissions fell to about 11 billion tonnes of CO2, while fires in populated temperate and high‑latitude forests caused outsized human and economic harm.
- The authors and complementary attribution teams say climate change made extreme fire weather more likely, describe strained international firefighting aid and insurance markets, and call for rapid cuts to fossil fuel emissions plus far stronger local adaptation such as vegetation management and resilient evacuation planning.