Top Ten Most Concerning Wildfire Statistics of 2023

The following statistics actually began as a list I was separately collating for Max, our CEO at Rain—it’s always good to have a set of data to point to why you’re spending every waking hour working on the wildfire problem. But we realized these stats are of vital importance to everyone working on the wildfire problem, to remind us of the scope of what's been happening in the fire world. And just in case you didn’t already think wildfire was utterly gobstoppingly urgent, here you go.

For a few more top-seven-of-2023 lists—Top 7 Trends to Watch or Top 7 most beautiful fire news phrases—you can see them on the substack version of this newsletter.

1. Absolutely the most sobering statistic this year came from Canada via Europe’s Atmosphere Monitoring Service Copernicus. “The CO2 emissions from Canada's wildfires starting at the beginning of May and lasting through June 26 rank as the largest annual estimated emissions in the group's 21-year data set”.
2. Second most grave: it’s just? been confirmed that this year was officially the hottest year in a century and a half for planet Earth.?(hot weather increases the likelihood of fires, and makes them harder to extinguish)
3. The amount of land scorched by wildfires in California has been on the rise for decades, and human-caused climate change is almost entirely to blame. A new study, published a week ago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that California’s summertime burned area has increased fivefold since 1971. And it won’t stop there — it could grow by another 50 percent by the year 2050. Another way of saying it: Four decades of wildfire data reveal that they’ve grown fivefold in Northern & Central California.
4. The number of people directly exposed to wildfires more than doubled from 2000 to 2019. Research shows that 21.8 million Americans found themselves living within 3 miles of a large wildfire over the past 2 decades. But while commentators often blame the rising risk on homebuilders pushing deeper into the wildland areas, we found that the population growth in these high-risk areas explained only a small part of the increase in the number of people who were exposed to wildfires. Instead, three-quarters of this trend was driven by intense fires growing out of control and encroaching on existing communities.
5. Wildfires caused $81.6 billion in damage from 2017 to 2021 — more than 10 times the $8.6 billion worth of damage they caused from 2012 to 2016, per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
6. The past decade has seen some of the most destructive wildfire seasons in U.S. history, including 2017 and 2020 when blazes torched more than 10 million acres both years. Scientists say weather extremes made worse by global warming will only increase the risk of wildfires — a danger that is compounded by the growing number of U.S. residents who live in wildfire-prone regions.? — Scientific American
7. Last year (2022), California wildfires sent an estimated 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to California Air Resources Board estimates. That’s equivalent to the emissions of about 1.9 million cars in a year and has undone two decades of air quality improvements in the state.
8. A new scientific white paper, which is covered by Oregon public radio, shows that “The number of people exposed to fire from 2000–2010 to 2011–2021 increased substantially, with the largest increase, nearly 250%, for people with high social vulnerability. In Oregon and Washington, a higher percentage of exposed people were highly vulnerable (>40%) than in California (~8%).”
9. A Joint Economic Committee report finds that climate-exacerbated wildfires cost the United States between $394 to $893 billion per year in economic costs and damages, equivalent to between 2-4% of the US GDP, much higher than previously thought. The full report is available as a pdf and for more of a synopsis, CNN covered it.
10. The Western US faces a looming threat of simultaneous megafires which will strain resources meant to respond to such fires, according to a study published in The International Journal of Wildland Fire. (note interesting fire response details for the truly nerdy ?? among us).
11. Researchers revealed that wildfire and drought caused $11.2 billion in economic losses to privately owned timberland in California, Oregon and Washington over the past two decades.

“Wildfires release more than 8 billion tons of CO2 annually. Reducing wildfires by just 10% would decrease CO2 emissions equal to the carbon released by 174 million cars. And every acre of forest saved results in 375 tons of CO2 sequestered in trees.” —Debbie Compton, Owning the Weather, USA Today

Thanks for reading, and next time we'll be back to the fresh fire news, like this practical guide for living with wildfire, and this story about how wildfire risk maps haven't been keeping up with changing climate conditions, and what's being done about it.