Scientists have long known that fires release substantial amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants into the atmosphere.
However, estimating the total climate impact of fires is challenging.
Now, new satellite data has shed fresh light on the complex interplay between the climate and fires in different landscapes around the world.
It suggests that global emissions from fires are much higher than previously assumed.
In this article, we unpack the latest update to the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) – a resource that combines satellite information on fire activity and vegetation to estimate how fires impact the land and atmosphere.
The latest update to the database – explored in new research published in journal Scientific Data – includes data up to and including the year 2024.
It reveals that, once the data from smaller fires is included, fire emissions sit at roughly 3.4bn tonnes of carbon (GtC) annually – significantly higher than previous estimates.
It also shows that carbon emissions from fires have remained stable over the past two to three decades, as rising emissions from forest fires have been offset by a decline in grassland fire emissions.
The database update also illustrates how the amount of area burned around the world each year is falling as expanding agriculture has created a fragmented landscape and new restrictions on crop residue burning have come into force.
Landscape fires
Fire events vary widely in cause, size and intensity. They take place across the globe in many types of landscapes – deserts and ice sheets are the only biomes that are immune to fire.
When vegetation burns, it releases greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming. It also releases pollutants that cause local air pollution and, on a global scale, have a cooling effect on the climate.
Forest fires often generate considerable media attention, especially when they threaten places where people live.
However, the forest fires that make the news represent just a small fraction of all fires globally.
More than 95% of the world’s burned area occurs in landscapes with few trees, such as savannahs and grasslands.
Fires have helped maintain tropical savannah ecosystems for millions of years. Savannahs have the perfect conditions for fire: a wet season which allows grasses and other “fuels” to grow, followed by an extended dry season where these fuels become flammable.
Historically, these fires were ignited by lightning. Today, they are mostly caused – intentionally or accidentally – by humans.
And yet, despite their prevalence, these fires receive relatively little media attention. This is not surprising, as they have been part of the landscape for so long and rarely threaten humans, except for their impact on air quality.
Fires also occur in croplands. For example, farmers may use fire to clear agricultural residues after harvest, or during deforestation to clear land for cultivation.
The term “landscape fires” is increasingly used to describe all fires that burn on land – both planned and unplanned.
(The term “wildfire”, on the other hand, covers a subset of landscape fires which are unplanned and typically burn in underdeveloped and underinhabited land.)
Calculating the carbon emissions of landscape fires is important to better understand their impact on local air quality and the global climate.
New data
In principle, calculating carbon emissions from fires is straightforward. The amount of vegetation consumed by fire – or “fuel consumption” – in one representative “unit” of burned area has to be multiplied by the total area burned.
Fuel consumption can be determined through field measurements and satellite analysis.
For example, the burned area of a relatively small fire can be measured by walking around the perimeter with a GPS device. Fuel consumption, meanwhile, can be derived by measuring the difference in amount of vegetation before and after a fire, something that is usually only feasible with planned fires.
In practice, however, fires are unpredictable and highly variable, making accurate measurement difficult.
To track where and when fires occur, researchers rely on satellite observations.
For two decades, NASA’s MODIS satellite sensors have provided a continuous, global record of fire activity. To avoid too many false alarms, the algorithms these satellites use are built in a way so fires are flagged only when they burn an entire 500-metre grid cell.
However, this approach misses many smaller fires – resulting in conservative estimates of total burned area.
The latest update to the GFED includes, for the first time, finer-resolution satellite data, including from the European Space Agency’s “sentinel missions”.
This data shows that fires too small to be picked up by a satellite with a 500-metre spatial resolution are extremely common. So common, in fact, that they nearly double previous estimates of global burned area.
The data shows that, on average, 800 hectares of land – an area roughly the size of Australia – has burned annually over the past two decades.
The map below shows the frequency of fires around the world. Regions shaded in dark red burn, on average, 50-100% each year. In other words, fires occur annually or biannually. Regions in dark blue, on the other hand, are those where fires occur, but are very infrequent. Most regions fall in between these extremes.
The map shows that the areas most prone to fire are largely found in the world’s savannah and agricultural regions.
Falling burned area
Over recent decades, the total burned area globally each year has been declining.
This is largely due to land-use change in regions which used to have frequent fires.
For example, savannah is being converted to croplands in Africa. This transforms a frequently burning land-use type to one that does not burn – and creates a more fragmented landscape with new firebreaks which limit the spread of fire.
The decline in burned area is also due to the introduction of more stringent air quality regulations limiting crop residue burning in much of the world, including the European Union.
The amount of “fuel” – or biomass – in a unit area of land varies greatly. Arid grasslands are biomass-poor and, therefore, produce less carbon emissions when burned, whereas fuel consumption in tropical forests with peat soils is extremely high.
Maps of carbon emissions from fires closely resemble maps of burned area. However, they typically highlight biomass-rich areas, such as dense forests.
This is illustrated in the map below, which shows how fires in regions coloured dark red on the map produce, on average, 1,000-5,000 grams of carbon per square metre. In these places, much more carbon is lost during fires than gained through photosynthesis.
Meanwhile, much of the world’s savannah regions are coloured in yellow and orange on the map, indicating that fires here produce between 100-500 grams of carbon per square metre.
Rising forest fire carbon emissions
The boost in fire emissions captured by the latest version of the GFED is most pronounced in open landscapes, including savannahs, grasslands and shrublands.
Forest fire emissions, on the other hand, have barely changed in the updated version of the database. This is because most forest fires are relatively large and were already well captured by the coarse resolution satellite data used previously.
However, the trend in forest fire emissions is sloping upwards over the study period.
Overall, current estimates – which take into account the new data from smaller fires – suggest that, over 2002-22, global fire emissions averaged 3.4GtC per year.
This is roughly 65% higher than estimates set out in the previous update to the GFED, which was published in 2017.
For comparison, today’s fossil fuel emissions are around 10GtC per year.
Comparisons between fire and fossil fuel carbon emissions are somewhat flawed, as much of the carbon released by fires is eventually reabsorbed when vegetation regrows.
However, this is not the case for fires linked to deforestation or the burning of tropical peatlands, where regrowth is either much slower – or non-existent, if forests are converted to agriculture. These fires account for roughly 0.4GtC each year – just less than 12% of total fire emissions – and contribute directly to the long-term rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).
The traditional view of forest fires as “carbon-neutral” is increasingly uncertain as the climate changes due to human activity. Longer fire seasons, drier vegetation and more lightning-induced ignitions are increasing fire frequency in many forested regions.
This is most apparent in the rapidly-warming boreal forests of the far-northern latitudes. The year 2023 saw the highest emissions ever recorded by satellites in boreal forests, breaking a record set just two years before.
Moreover, the fires in boreal forests are becoming more intense – meaning they burn hotter and consume a larger fraction of vegetation. This, in turn, jeopardises the recovery of forests.
In cold areas, fires also cause permafrost to break down faster. This happens because fires remove an organic soil layer that has an insulating effect which prevents permafrost thaw.
The map below shows the dominant fire type in different regions of the world, including boreal forest fires (dark green), cropland fires (red), open savannah (darker yellow) and woody savannah (brown).
Changing ‘pyrogeography’
Thanks to more precise satellite data we now know that fire emissions are higher than we thought previously, with the new version of GFED having 65% higher overall fire emissions than its predecessor.
However, all evidence suggests that emissions from fires have been stable over the past two to three decades. This is because an increase in forest fire emissions is being offset by a decline in grassland fire emissions.
The world’s changing “pyrogeography” is illustrated in the bar chart below, which breaks down annual fire emissions across different types of biome.
It shows how low-intensity grassland fires with modest fuel consumption – represented in yellow and brown – have declined over time, while high-intensity forest fires – illustrated in green colours – are becoming more prominent, albeit with substantial variability in emissions year-on-year.
The post Guest post: Why carbon emissions from fires are significantly higher than thought appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: Why carbon emissions from fires are significantly higher than thought
New Zealand’s parliament has adopted a controversial new law blocking a whole avenue of climate litigation and shutting down its most advanced corporate lawsuit, which has been blamed by the government for shaking business confidence and investment.
The Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill, expected to take effect in the coming days after it is formally signed by the Governor-General, prevents all current and future civil claims for climate loss or harm under tort law.
Justice minister Paul Goldsmith said last week that the aim was to give businesses “certainty around their climate change obligations”, noting it would not alter the government’s responsibilities under the Climate Change Response Act 2002 nor business obligations under the Emissions Trading Scheme.
“Our response to climate change is best managed by the Government at a national level and not through piece-meal litigation in the courts,” he added in a statement.
Such litigation, he said, “risks developing a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted” to tackle climate change.
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Experts say that despite dismissing the lawsuit, the ruling sets a precedent by confirming that climate science can establish legal liability for the damage caused by emissions
Goldsmith singled out a key domestic climate lawsuit brought by Northland iwi leader and activist Mike Smith against six big companies: dairy firms Fonterra and Dairy Holdings, energy firms Genesis Energy and Z Energy, New Zealand Steel and coal mining firm BT Mining. A seventh original defendant, Channel Infrastructure, was dropped after it permanently decommissioned its Marsden Point oil refinery.
Smith argued that these companies had caused him harm under public nuisance and negligence law, as well as a third breach of a duty to cease contributing to climate change that has yet to be tested domestically. He did not seek financial compensation, instead asking for the companies to immediately stop emitting or contributing to net greenhouse gas emissions.
In one of the most advanced corporate climate accountability lawsuits in the world, a trial had been scheduled for April 2027 after the Supreme Court unanimously allowed the case to continue.
Corporate lobbying in the shadows
Smith described the passing of the bill as “deeply concerning”, particularly as it coincided with the Supreme Court hearing another of his climate lawsuits. In that case, Smith v Attorney-General, he argues that the government’s response to climate change and its impacts on Māori communities in particular breaches rights to life and culture.
“That timing raises profound questions about the separation of powers and the rule of law,” said Smith. “Whatever one’s view of the merits of these cases, it is deeply troubling when parliament intervenes to remove a legal pathway while the courts are actively considering fundamental questions about climate responsibility, rights and the crown’s obligations.”
The bill – which says that no person (including the government) can be found liable in tort for emissions-related climate change effects – followed major lobbying efforts by the companies defending themselves in Smith’s lawsuit. They outlined a proposed legal amendment in a briefing note to the government in 2024.
The centre-right government has been fiercely criticised over its lack of transparency in relation to this lobbying activity. The national ombudsman recently found that the Prime Minister’s Office effectively withheld information requested by the Environmental Law Initiative about meetings, discussions and conversations regarding Smith’s case.
Green groups fail to stop bill
The bill sparked huge concern among environmental campaigners in New Zealand and elsewhere. Greenpeace Aotearoa called it a “shocking abuse of executive power” and the vast majority of submissions to a parliamentary inquiry said it should be rejected.
But in the end, it was adopted with little resistance, moving relatively smoothly through parliament, passing its third reading by 67 votes to 53. Sam Bookman, climate law lecturer at Melbourne Law School, told Climate Home News he was not surprised by this, given that the coalition government has a secure majority.
A complaint has been made to the UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights by Smith, the National Iwi Chairs Forum Pou Tikanga and youth coalition Climate Clinic Aotearoa over what they see as the government’s heavy-handed approach. Smith is also challenging the new law in yet another lawsuit.
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Bookman thinks it “very unlikely” that such a challenge will succeed, noting that New Zealand’s constitution is firmly anchored in parliamentary sovereignty.
But the expert in climate law does not see the bill as the end of legal action in the country, noting that New Zealand has a “sophisticated climate litigation landscape with a growing number of specialist and experienced lawyers and NGOs”.
The country is also approaching its next general election in November, and some opposition parties have pledged to restore access to the courts if elected.
Amanda Larsson, global project lead on agriculture for Greenpeace International, said: “This law deserves to be tested, and I strongly encourage the international climate litigation community to unite and help defend New Zealanders’ fundamental right to hold polluters accountable before this becomes a global blueprint.”
Copycat legislation on the rise
New Zealand’s move is part of a small but growing legislative effort to shut down climate litigation around the world.
In the US, Republican politicians introduced legislation in the House and Senate in April that would shield fossil fuel firms from climate liability lawsuits. Similar laws have already been passed at state level in Tennessee, Utah, Iowa and Louisiana.
The German state of Bavaria has put forward a similar proposal to the Federal Council, aiming to block private climate claims as well as the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments imposing such liability. There are also proposals to limit available remedies and actions in the Netherlands and Belgium.
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Bookman said he expects more efforts to counter climate damages litigation and advised plaintiffs to think about how to respond, including drawing on broader support in opposing them.
“Even though it’s very hard for plaintiffs to win these types of cases, companies are very eager to avoid the expense, embarrassment and political accountability that come even with unsuccessful lawsuits,” he said.
The post New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation appeared first on Climate Home News.
New Zealand moves to protect business with law curtailing climate litigation
Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara is the Executive Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS), an Indonesia-based economic think tank. Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is the Director of the China-Indonesia desk at CELIOS.
Indonesia produces around 60% of the world’s nickel, a metal used to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) – more than any other country in the world. But in 2026, the government sharply reduced how much of its nickel can be extracted from the ground.
Production quotas were reduced by around 40% this year compared to 2025. Weda Bay, the largest nickel mine on Earth, had its allowance cut by more than 70% and exhausted its full-year quota by the end of May, halting mining entirely; it cannot resume large-scale extraction until next year unless regulators grant an extension.
The policy has sparked a vivid debate in Indonesian policy circles: how can the country shift its strategy from a decade of mining vast quantities of cheap nickel to producing a high-value and low-carbon material that the rest of the world wants for EV batteries.
The cuts aren’t a silver bullet to clean up Indonesia’s nickel industry, whose smelters are powered by coal – the most polluting fossil fuels. But alongside stricter enforcement of environmental rules, it is one side of efforts to produce more sustainable nickel for a premium.
Restricting Indonesia’s nickel output
Production quotas were introduced to stop the collapse of nickel prices because of oversupply in the market. Prices had fallen more than 40% in 2023 alone and kept sliding as Indonesian supply kept growing, hitting a four-year low of around $13,900 a ton in late 2025.
Critics called the recent tightening of production quotas proof that Indonesia’s nickel strategy has failed, arguing that the industry shouldn’t need to throttle its own output to survive. But when assessed against what the policy was supposed to do – push up nickel prices – it has worked. Prices jumped to $20,000 a ton in May, the highest since 2024.
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Chinese industry groups representing companies that have invested billions to mine and refine the country’s nickel were furious, warning Indonesia’s president Prabowo Subianto that the cuts put $50 billion worth of investment at risk. But much of that Chinese capital is sunk into smelters and processing plants built specifically to run on Indonesian ore, and cannot simply be moved elsewhere. That gives Jakarta more room to hold its ground than the warning suggests.
Stronger environmental enforcement
Since the start of the year, Indonesia’s forestry task force has seized more than four million hectares of land from mines and plantations operating illegally in protected forests, collecting over two trillion rupiah ($113 million) in fines.
This included 148 hectares seized from Weda Bay for lacking a forestry permit. The share of nickel produced from illegal small-scale mining also fell from about a quarter in 2022 to roughly 10% by 2024.
The crackdown responds to serious environmental damages in the nickel industry. On Obi Island, a waste pond collapsed after heavy rain in June 2025, flooding three villages and killing a resident. Internal company tests found chromium-6 – a carcinogen – in the water, in quantities far above the legal limit. The footprint of another mine near Raja Ampat, which is home to some of the world’s richest coral reefs, grew 60-fold in just eight years.
The market is responding to early cleanup efforts. Low-carbon nickel now sells for a real premium, roughly $18,800 to $19,300 a ton compared with $17,900 to $18,300 otherwise, as carmakers seek to source cleaner materials to comply with the European Union’s new emissions rules for imports.
In turn, this is incentivising the industry to do more to green its operations. Vale Indonesia’s smelter in South Sulawesi now runs almost entirely on hydropower, for example.
None of this addresses coal use, however. Major Indonesian nickel producers still emitted an estimated 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2023. Indonesia may be cracking down on illegal mining and rewarding cleaner producers but it is still running its mines on the dirtiest fuel available.
Unequal benefits
For Indonesia to truly benefit from producing cleaner and high-value nickel, it needs to reap the economic benefits too. Although the industry has boosted the country’s economic growth, the reality on the ground tells a different story.
Konawe in Southeast Sulawesi is home to a major smelting complex. Growth in the district jumped from 6% to 22% between 2015 and 2023, driven almost entirely by the nickel industry, according to a study by the Lowy Institute study. At the same time, poverty levels increased slightly and unemployment remained unchanged.
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In Halmahera, another epicentre of the nickel industry, spending by the poorest fifth grew just 5% between 2019 and 2022, compared with 28% for the wealthiest fifth, according to a separate study.
Part of the reason for this inequality is the system for transferring mining royalties to district authorities where the mines are located. In theory, they are entitled to the largest share. But in practice, payments are delayed, companies routinely dispute what they owe and royalties are pooled and distributed across a larger area.
The Natural Resource Governance Institute has found that decentralisation handed local governments power to approve new mines faster than they could build their capacity to manage them. Higher output raises national income on paper, but local governments remain constrained by fiscal rules and infrastructure costs that scale with mining.
None of this makes the 2026 quota cuts a mistake. Indonesia has every right to defend its pricing power over a resource it controls. But limiting extraction isn’t going to fix underlying issues around environmental enforcement and revenue-sharing. That requires rules that are consistently enforced, royalties that reach communities living by the mines, and a plan to wean smelters off coal.
The post Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry appeared first on Climate Home News.
Indonesia’s nickel production cuts are not enough to create a sustainable industry
Climate Change
Risk of “catastrophic” oil spill reaching Kimberley coast found in Woodside’s Scott Reef gas drilling plans
SYDNEY, Monday 24 August 2026 – New analysis of Woodside modelling released by Greenpeace Australia Pacific and Environs Kimberley has revealed the oil and gas corporation’s plans to drill at Scott Reef could cause an oil spill up to 30 times bigger than the 2009 Montara disaster, impacting the Kimberley coastline and reaching as far as Indonesia.
The new analysis details the “catastrophic” oil spill risk put to environmental regulators for approval by Woodside in its Browse to North West Shelf Project (Browse) plans, the worst-case scenario being a blowout directly below Scott Reef, polluting whale migratory pathways and covering isolated turtle nesting ground with oil condensate.
An FOI application (F348) revealed the federal environment department (DCCEEW) asked offshore oil and gas regulator NOPSEMA to look into the oil spill risk in 2025. NOPSEMA’s response to the application refused access to its report, and one document shows DCCEEW sought further advice this year.
Greenpeace and Environs Kimberley are calling on the Federal Government to publicly release the NOPSEMA report given the risk of an uncontrolled release of oil condensate from directly below Scott Reef.
Hannah Schuch, Senior Campaigner at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Woodside is aware that drilling at Scott Reef risks a massive oil spill that would have severe, far-reaching consequences. It appears environmental regulators are aware too.
“The state and federal governments need to take this risk from Woodside’s drilling plans seriously, as they could end up allowing the worst oil spill in Australian history.
“The pygmy blue whales that migrate up and down the WA coast with their newborns each year could be swimming and feeding in toxic, oil-slicked water. Woodside’s proposal to drill at Scott Reef is an environmental disaster waiting to happen, and the WA and federal governments have one surefire way to prevent catastrophe — reject Browse.”
Martin Prichard, Executive Director at Environs Kimberley, said: “A catastrophic oil spill by Woodside would be disastrous not just for marine life in the area but also for the Kimberley’s $500 million tourism industry.
“The state and federal governments will see five marine parks on the Kimberley coast included in the risk area of a catastrophic Woodside oil spill.
“The Montara oil spill was disastrous for West Timor with the toxic oil destroying seaweed farmers’ livelihoods. The Kimberley dodged a bullet with Montara, we were lucky the spill didn’t head our way. Myself and a crew flew over the Montara oil spill and followed it as far as we could. It was like a scene from a disaster movie.”
After the WA Environmental Protection Authority deemed Browse “unacceptable” due, in part, to oil spill risk, Woodside submitted a mitigation plan based on technology that has never been used “in anger”, a weakness stated in an independent expert review of the plan.
Professor Richard Steiner, independent oil spill expert, said: “A large offshore spill is impossible to effectively contain or recover. Historically, only 2-6% of total spill volume is recovered and the ecological injury from the release of toxic hydrocarbons in the sea can be severe, extensive, and long-term.
“Here in Alaska, government research concludes that several marine populations injured by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, including whales, fish, and seabirds, are still not recovering today, 37 years later. We should expect similar long-term ecological impacts in Western Australia if there were to be a major oil spill. The only sure way to avoid the risk of a catastrophic marine oil spill is to not develop oil and gas projects in marine environments.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Emma Sangalli on emma.sangalli@greenpeace.org or 0431 513 465
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