Overview

• The frequency of the 200 costliest, societally disastrous fires rose about 4.4 times from 1980 to 2023, with a sharp uptick beginning around 2015.
• About 43% of these high-damage events occurred in the study’s final decade, and fires killing at least 10 people became three times more common.
• The researchers link most catastrophic outcomes to days of hot, dry, windy fire weather that have become more frequent as the climate warms.
• The team quantified impacts using Munich Re’s global insurance losses combined with the EM‑DAT disaster database, while noting major data gaps in national reporting.
• Hotspots where high fire risk overlaps dense populations cover roughly 10% of land, a pattern reflected in recent disasters in Valparaíso (2024) and Los Angeles (2025), and growing suppression spending has not reversed the trend.