Record wildfire losses rocked 2025 even as global burned area neared all-time lows
Researchers said 2025 wildfire losses hit a record $54 billion globally even as burned area fell to the second-lowest level since 2002.
- Despite the second-lowest burned area since 2002, 2025 became the costliest year on record for insured wildfire losses globally, according to an analysis published Sunday in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment.
- Researchers identified a fundamental shift in wildfire impact: fires increasingly strike densely populated areas with high-value infrastructure, creating concentrated losses even when total burned acreage remains relatively low.
- The Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, which burned in January 2025, stand as history's costliest wildfire disaster, destroying nearly 12,000 homes and causing roughly $140 billion in total economic losses.
- Catastrophic wildfires across Canada, the United States, Europe, and South Korea forced more than 300,000 evacuations and caused over 90 deaths, while wildfire-related carbon emissions reached 11 billion tonnes in 2025.
- Report lead author Matthew Jones of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research stated, "2025 shows that a 'quiet' fire year globally can still be devastating," warning that societies face escalating risks without decisive action.
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Although the total area burned was relatively small, 2025 was the year with the greatest economic losses already recorded in relation to forest fires, according to a new analysis published on Sunday. Los Angeles fires and some other severe fire outbreaks in other countries, including South Korea and Spain, raised the global losses to at least US$ 54 billion (R$ 271 billion), estimated the study. This was the highest level of insured losses alrea…
A 'quiet' wildfire year just became the most expensive one ever
The global 2025 wildfire season can be summed up with one of two extreme datapoints. It can be strange to think of the good news of wildfires, but for the optimists, last year’s blazes set aflame the second smallest number of square miles since 2002, behind only 2018, when around 330 million hectares burned. For the realists in the rooms—perhaps joined by economists and accountants—2025’s wildfire season was anything but good news. Last year’s f…
Record wildfire losses rocked 2025 even as global burned area neared all-time lows
A new analysis of global wildfire activity in 2025 reveals the world experienced some of the most destructive and deadly fire events in recent history, despite the second lowest area burned since 2002. It highlights a continued trend toward fires becoming increasingly extreme, costly, and disastrous—both economically and in lives lost.
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