Overview

• The Science analysis finds the most economically damaging wildfires now occur about four times as often as in the 1980s, with a sharp uptick beginning around 2015.
• Disasters that kill at least 10 people have roughly tripled since 1980, with 43% of the 200 costliest events happening in the past decade.
• Researchers combined Munich Re’s NatCatSERVICE with the EM-DAT database to assess 1980–2023 losses and fatalities, noting persistent gaps in publicly available economic data.
• A hotspot model flags about 10% of Earth’s land near populations as high risk, a map that encompassed the 2024 Chile fires and Los Angeles’ 2025 outbreaks.
• The escalation is linked to more frequent extreme fire weather tied to human-caused warming, compounded by growth at the wildland–urban interface and legacy land management, while rising suppression spending has not reversed the trend.