The world burned less in 2025 than almost any year in recent memory. The destruction, however, was greater than ever.
A new analysis led by the University of East Anglia found that 335 million hectares burned globally in 2025, which is 16 percent below the long-term average and the second lowest total since 2002. Total fire-related carbon emissions also dropped to 11 billion metric tons of CO2, the third lowest year in more than two decades.
Despite those numbers, 2025 became the costliest year on record for insured wildfire losses globally, with wildfires accounting for 38 percent of all insured natural hazard losses worldwide. A string of major fires across Canada, the United States, Europe, and South Korea triggered more than 300,000 evacuations and killed more than 90 people.
The fires in Los Angeles stood out even within that grim record. They ranked as the fifth most costly natural disaster in history in terms of insured losses, at $40 billion, and caused $140 billion in total losses.
The findings were published as part of the Climate Chronicles series in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment. According to Phys.org, the research team also included scientists from the University of California Merced, the Met Office Hadley Centre, Imperial College London, the Canadian Forest Service, and universities in Portugal and Thailand.
Dr. Matthew Jones, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA, said, "2025 shows that a 'quiet' fire year globally can still be devastating. We are seeing a growing disconnect between total area burned and real-world impacts, with risk increasingly determined by fire location, intensity and exposure."
Jones added, "The wildfires of 2025 demonstrate that without decisive action, societies will continue to face escalating human, economic and environmental risks in an era of more extreme fires."
The researchers point to a broader shift in where and how fires burn. As savanna fires decline, destructive wildfires are increasingly appearing in temperate and high-latitude regions, where forests carry heavy fuel loads and climate-driven drought and heat amplify dangerous fire weather. Population growth along the boundary between developed land and wild areas adds to the exposure.
The authors call for rapid cuts in fossil fuel emissions, stronger vegetation management, more resilient infrastructure, and better evacuation planning to reduce future losses.
