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<\/p>\nRecord-breaking heat and drought have fueled the world\u2019s worst ever start to a wildfire year, as climate change and a developing El Ni\u00f1o threaten to push extreme weather to new heights.<\/p>\n
Over the first four months of this year, more than 150 million hectares (579,150 square miles) was burned, according to satellite estimates from the Global Wildfire Information System. That\u2019s an area nearly the size of Alaska and roughly double the seasonal average for this period.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis rapid start, in combination with the forecast El Ni\u00f1o means that we\u2019re looking at a particularly severe year,\u201d said Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather and climate researcher at Imperial College London.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s early season wildfires have overwhelmed fire crews in Argentina, Chile and Japan, while fueling historic blazes in the US and Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
The fire surge is a symptom of a broader trend of extreme weather that\u2019s expected to worsen this year. Heat waves are likely to put further pressure on agricultural systems and global supply chains for food, while higher cooling demand could compound the energy shock from the Iran war, scientists say.<\/p>\n Sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere is the lowest recorded for this time of year, and oceans are approaching record-high temperatures, data from the University of Maine\u2019s Climate Change Institute show. New heat records have already been set this year, from Australia and Greenland to France and the US Southwest. Spain and Brazil have witnessed historic rainfall.<\/p>\n The extreme weather effects are likely to be amplified even further by El Ni\u00f1o, a naturally recurring warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that can raise global temperatures and worsen heat, drought, floods and fires. US forecasters say<\/a> El Ni\u00f1o is likely to develop from June to August, and is showing signs of being exceptionally strong.<\/p>\n Human-driven warming alone would likely be enough to fuel weather records this year, but El Ni\u00f1o raises a \u201cserious risk\u201d of unprecedented extremes, said Friederike Otto, a climate researcher at Imperial College London and co-founder of World Weather Attribution, which organized the press briefing.<\/p>\n Photograph: A firefighter battles the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, US, on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025; photo credit: Jill Connelly\/Bloomberg<\/em><\/p>\n Topics<\/span> Catastrophe<\/a> Natural Disasters<\/a> Wildfire<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Was this article valuable?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.insurancejournal.com\/app\/uploads\/2026\/05\/fire-season-hits-fast-forward-bloomberg.jpg\")
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