The State of Wildfires report (Jones et al. 2024) builds a record of extreme fires of the past fire season, analyses the causes of some key events including the role of climate change, and presents projections of future likelihood of extreme wildfire events.

The mapped data are one of UEA's major contributions to the State of Wildfires report. The new analyses are regional summaries of the estimates of burned area, fire carbon emissions, and individual fire characteristics produced from NASA, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting, and the Global Fire Atlas observations. The regional summaries are provided for various different layers, including countries, level-1 global administrative regions (e.g. States of the USA, Provinces of China), biomes, and IPCC regions.

The interactive map highlights regional extreme values in five key metrics of fire season extremity during the 2023-2024 fire season, compared with previous fire seasons since 2002. Fire seasons are defined as March-February for the purposes of this report. The mapped data include departures in each metric from their average values, expressed in relative terms (percent above or below the mean of all fire seasons since 2002). The metrics included are:

• Regional totals of Burned Area. A measure of the total extent of all fires combined in the displayed regions (input unit: km²). Positive departures mean that fires burned a larger area in the 2023-2024 fire season than usual.
• Regional totals of Fire Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) Emissions. A measure of the amount of carbon emitted from fires into the atmosphere from all fires in the displayed regions (input unit: thousand kg of Carbon). Positive departures mean that fires emitted more carbon in the 2023-2024 fire season than usual.
• Regional Number of Fires. A measure of count of fires within the displayed regions (input unit: count). Positive departures mean that there were more fires during the 2023-2024 fire season than usual. [Data begins in 2003].
• Regional 95^th Percentile Fire Size. A measure of the size that the top 5% largest fires reached, assessed for each fire season (input unit: km²). Positive departures mean that the top-ranking fires during the 2023-2024 fire season were larger than usual. [Data begins in 2003].
• Regional 95^th Percentile Fire Rate of Growth. A measure of the average daily rate at which the top 5% fastest fires expanded, assessed for each fire season (input unit: km per day). Positive departures mean that the top-ranking fires during the 2023-2024 fire season were faster than usual. [Data begins in 2003].

Please cite as:

Jones, M. W., Kelley, D. I., Burton, C. A., Di Giuseppe, F., et al. (2024) State of Wildfires 2023-24, Earth System Science Data, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3601-2024.

Jones, M. W., Brambleby, E., Andela, N., van der Werf, G., Parrington, M., & Giglio, L. (2024). State of Wildfires 2023-24: Regional Summaries of Burned Area, Fire Emissions, and Individual Fire Characteristics for National, Administrative and Biogeographical Regions [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11400539.