The number of extreme forest fires has increased sharply over the past twenty years

Last year in Canada, massive fires ravaged more than 15 million hectares of vegetation, cost the lives of eight firefighters and led to the evacuation of 230,000 people. During Australia’s “black summer” of 2019-20, a fifth of the country’s forests were wiped out by flames, hundreds of millions of animals burned or asphyxiated and extraordinary amounts of noxious smoke expelled. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolutionresearchers from the University of Tasmania demonstrate that it is not just an impression: these extreme events, fueled by global warming, are becoming more and more frequent over the years.

Certainly, the authors of the publication point out, most fires on land are small and do not cause considerable damage. “ It has been widely reported that the area burned globally has declined this century “, largely due to expansion and…