Both the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out on January 7, 2025 in Los Angeles, United States. According to data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 70 per cent and 95 per cent of the fires in Palisades and Eaton had been contained as of January 23, burning more than 23,000 and 14,000 acres of land, respectively.
A second set of fires — Hughes fire, Sepulveda fire and Clay fire — began on January 22, 21 and 23, respectively. These have burned over 10,000, 40 and 39 acres, respectively. As of January 23, only 14 per cent, 0 per cent and 65 per cent of the Hughes, Sepulveda and Clay fires have been contained. Preliminary estimates suggested there have been 28 fatalities, with more than 15,000 structures destroyed.
Down to Earth speaks with Minal Pathak, associate professor at Global Centre for Environment and Energy, Ahmedabad University. She is one of the authors of the United Nations Emissions Gap report about why the Emissions Gap report considered wildfire emissions for the first time, how inventories are increasingly considering wildfires emissions and how climate change makes accounting complicated.
Rohini Krishnamurthy (RK): The 2024 Emissions Gap report considered wildfires linked to land-use change in its estimates. What about those linked to human-induced climate change?
Minal Pathak (MP): Wildfires fall into two categories: natural and anthropogenic. The latter includes fires set deliberately for livestock or agriculture. Some global databases account for anthropogenic fires. When a fire is set, land use changes and emissions are released from burning the forest. These emissions include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and various air pollutants such as black carbon and carbon monoxide.
CO₂ is generally assumed to be carbon neutral, as the burnt area is expected to recover over time (resulting in net-zero forcing). However, methane, nitrous oxide and other emissions must be considered, as they contribute to radiative forcing. The assumption of “carbon neutrality” can be challenged, particularly as fires become more severe and due to time displacement. Nonetheless, fire and recovery are generally considered part of the “natural land sink.”
However, wildfires can also be triggered by human-induced climate change. The wildfire emissions from Canada in 2023 and 2024 were reported as natural in inventories. The same applies to California, where fires were classified as natural in the sense that no one deliberately ignited them. However, climatic conditions played a role in triggering the fires, yet these factors are not accounted for in greenhouse gas inventories.
The Emissions Gap Report only includes emissions directly caused by human activity. This excludes naturally occurring emissions, such as those from volcanic eruptions. This is the first time the report has included a dedicated section on wildfires, attempting to explain the challenges involved in accounting for these emissions.
RK: What makes including wildfire greenhouse gas emissions in inventories complicated?
MP: When a tree burns, CO₂ is released, but much of it is reabsorbed over time as the area regenerates. This introduces a temporal aspect to carbon accounting. That is the first problem.
A second challenge arises from climate change itself, which affects how trees absorb and store carbon, adding another layer of uncertainty. It is unclear how forests will restock their carbon stores after fires.
There is also the issue of double counting. For example, some CO₂ emissions from fires in tropical regions should be excluded to avoid duplication with deforestation data, as deforestation in these areas often occurs through burning. Similarly, methane and nitrous oxide emissions from crop burning should not be counted twice if they overlap with agricultural residue burning emissions.
Also, there is a difference in how global emissions are accounted for and the way national emissions are accounted for. As always, country-level data is more uncertain than the global level. But the question is with increasing forest fire activities, how much of the carbon sink effect can be retained in forests amid increasing wildfire activity and whether these carbon stocks remain stable in the long term.
RK: Are inventories increasingly considering wildfires?
MP: The burning of annual vegetation is considered carbon neutral since it maintains equilibrium, whereas forest fires should generally be included — except in tropical areas where they overlap with deforestation.
The inventories will change, I think, because of increased incidents of wildfires linked to climate change. Although accounting for these emissions remains challenging, global databases and national inventories are becoming more nuanced.
For example, India’s Fourth Biennial Update Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2024 accounted for forest fires using the Forest Survey of India methodology. The report indicated that methane and nitrogen oxide emissions from forest fires have increased. This highlights the significance of what is included or excluded in emissions accounting.
RK: What data is used in the Emissions Gap Report? Does it rely on national inventories?
MP: The Emissions Gap Report does not use national data. Instead, it refers to global estimates such as EDGAR (Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research); Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED – initiated around 2000 by James Randerson (then at Caltech, now at UCI) and Jim Collatz (NASA) to estimate fire emissions and burned areas using satellite data and vegetation productivity and the global carbon budget — an international project that quantifies anthropogenic CO₂ emissions and carbon removal by land and oceans to track atmospheric CO₂ levels.
The latest GFED dataset (GFED4s) includes small fire burned areas from 2017 onwards, based on the relationship between active fires and emissions. However, these estimates carry significant uncertainty, particularly when extrapolating data for regions with limited fire activity from 1997 to 2016, making them unsuitable for trend analysis.
The EDGAR database includes forest fires from boreal and temperate forests, as well as peat fires, using a Tier 1 method to estimate net forest sink without fires. Meanwhile, GFED accounts for global tropical deforestation and Equatorial Asia peat fires, but the overall contribution is relatively small (0.03 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent). The aim is to constrain the estimates as much as possible to direct anthropogenic fires only.
RK: Is UNEP considering including wildfires linked to climate change in the emissions gap report?
MP: One of my colleagues is currently developing methodologies to facilitate this process. However, short-term accounting could significantly inflate emissions inventories, as large wildfires can release substantial emissions in a single event.
Unless a clear method is developed to attribute wildfire emissions to anthropogenic causes—whether directly or indirectly due to climate change — it remains difficult to include them accurately. That said, with new data emerging, I expect the situation to improve in terms of transparency and consistency from next year onwards.
RK: Given how wildfires are increasing, what should the world be doing to tackle the problem?
MP: I think we generally need to strengthen both data collection and scientific capacity. We need to make our data on forest fires, long-term impacts and other related studies on carbon pools more transparent and robust.
For example, estimating soil carbon involves calculating both below-ground and above-ground biomass, which is done using standardised emission factors. Apart from some national institutions, India does not yet have sufficient capacity in this area. This is certainly an area where greater investment is needed, particularly in the land use, agriculture and forestry sectors.
The other key issue is wildfire management. Take Los Angeles, for instance — they had to divert all their resources into the city. In India, do we have the capacity to deal with such fires? Do we have sufficient water? Are communities adequately prepared? Is there an effective early warning system?
As these incidents increase, countries will not only need to deepen their understanding of wildfires but also build their capacities to manage them. I do not think forest fires are yet a priority in India’s policy agenda.