Researchers warn that 2026 could bring a particularly severe global fire season as background warming and a likely strong El Niño combine with an unusually rapid start to the year’s burning.
“The global fire season has got off to a very fast start,” says Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather researcher at Imperial College London and a member of World Weather Attribution (WWA). Wildfires this year have already burned about 50% more than the long‑term average for this time of year, and the total area currently ablaze worldwide is more than 20% higher than the previous record since satellite tracking began in 2012.
Africa has been especially hard hit. Nearly all countries in West Africa and across the Sahel have seen record burn areas: about 85 million hectares (roughly 328,000 square miles) have burned so far, compared with the prior record of 69 million hectares. Heavy seasonal rains last year produced abundant grasses and fuels that, when followed by recent heat and drought, created ideal conditions for large fires—a rapid wet‑to‑dry shift researchers call “hydroclimate whiplash.”
Asia is another major contributor to the anomalous totals. Massive outbreaks across India, Southeast Asia and northeastern China have pushed Asian burn area to almost 40% more than the region’s previous record year. The United States and Australia have also reported unusually large burnt areas early in 2026.
All of this is unfolding before a potentially strong El Niño develops later in the year. Forecasts give about a 61% chance that El Niño will emerge in the May–July window and persist through at least the end of the year. Scientists warn that if a strong or “super” El Niño does form, it could amplify extreme fire risk in many regions by altering rainfall, drought and temperature patterns.
Crucially, any El Niño will sit atop a warmer climate baseline. Friederike Otto, a WWA co‑founder and climate science professor at Imperial College, notes that these natural cycles now occur against decades of accumulated human‑caused warming. Central equatorial Pacific waters are forecast to be around 3°C (5.4°F) above average in the second half of the year—an El Niño signal layered on top of long‑term planetary heating.
Public health impacts are severe when fires ramp up. Jemilah Mahmood, executive director of the Sunway Center for Planetary Health, warns that wildfire smoke is not ordinary pollution: fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from biomass burning can be far more harmful than traffic emissions, and smoke exposure can drive acute and chronic illnesses. A 2024 study in The Lancet estimated about 1.5 million deaths per year are linked to air pollution, and researchers expect that increasing wildfire frequency and intensity will raise that toll.
The World Meteorological Organization has also cautioned that greenhouse gas concentrations and global imbalances in the climate system are at unprecedented levels, driven largely by fossil fuel burning. Scientists emphasize that while El Niño is a natural cycle, it is the warmer, human‑altered climate that magnifies the intensity and frequency of extreme events.
WWA researchers and public health experts stress that this confluence of factors is not a reason to panic but a call to act: rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions, accelerate deployment of renewable energy and storage, and invest in adaptation and wildfire prevention measures. The technology and knowledge to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and to build resilience already exist—what’s needed is faster, widespread implementation to avoid even worse fire seasons in the years ahead.
Edited by: Jennifer Collins