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More than 150 million hectares of land burned globally between January and April 2026, the highest figure on record for the period, according to World Weather Attribution.
Africa recorded the largest burnt area, while Asia saw extensive wildfire outbreaks in India, China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.
Scientists warn that a developing El Niño, combined with rising temperatures and drier conditions, could worsen wildfires and their health impacts.
More than 150 million hectares of land burned across the world in the first four months of 2026, the highest figure on record for this period, according to a briefing released by the World Weather Attribution group on May 11, 2026.
The group said warming temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns, including increased dryness in many regions, could make wildfires much worse as an El Niño event develops, increasing the area burnt and affecting people’s health.
WWA is a global consortium of scientists who assess the contribution of warming and consequent climate change in the increase of frequency, intensity and duration of extreme weather events across the world.
The area burnt by wildfires between January and April was 50 per cent higher than the recent average for the same period between 2012 and 2025, almost double the figure for 2024 and 20 per cent higher than the previous record set in 2020, according to the WWA analysis.
The largest area burnt by wildfires was in Africa, where 85 million hectares were affected — the highest since 2012 and 23 per cent higher than the previous record of 69 million hectares. The burnt area spanned Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan.
In Asia, there were extensive wildfire outbreaks in India, China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. Around 44 million hectares of land burned in the first four months of 2026, compared with the previous record of 32 million hectares set in 2014 — an increase of 40 per cent.
“In India, agricultural burning is widespread, but the major fire outbreaks we have seen in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh occurred concurrently to very dry conditions, meaning that escaped agricultural fires were much more likely to burn greater areas,” the briefing said.
The wildfires in India, as well as in the lush forests of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, have also been linked to severe drought, with warming and climate change playing a role, according to WWA.
In North America, the United States was the worst affected by wildfires, mainly driven by a record-breaking heatwave in March in the western regions of the country. WWA estimated that the heatwave was made seven times more likely by warming and climate change. Around 50 per cent of the US is currently under drought conditions, further increasing the risk of fires.
Chile and Argentina in South America suffered the burning of 25 acres of land every minute because of extreme heat in January 2026, according to WWA.
“These figures are yet more clear evidence that global heating — driven by pollution from coal, oil and gas — is burning up a staggering proportion of nations’ landmasses,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the briefing.
Warming and climate change have increased the worldwide burned area by 15 per cent, the briefing said. Annual potential burning hours increased by 36 per cent between 1975 and 2024. “Extreme days with more than 12 potential burning hours rose 81 to 233 per cent in fire-prone biomes,” it added.
One of the major impacts of wildfires will be on human health because of worsening air quality.
“In the subarctic ER where I work, I see children in respiratory distress from asthma exacerbations and elders with worsening heart disease when the air becomes unsafe to breathe,” said Courtney Howard, chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance and founder of PlanetaryHealth Organizations for Well-being, Equity and Regeneration, or POWER, in the briefing.
An El Niño event is developing in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean and could emerge as soon as May-July, according to the World Meteorological Organization. El Niño is the warmer-than-normal phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomenon and generally leads to higher-than-normal temperatures and drying across many regions, further increasing the risk of extensive wildfires and expanding burnt areas.
Many climate scientists and weather agencies have warned that the El Niño of 2026 could be one of the strongest in a century.
“Here, a strong El Niño against the backdrop of elevated baseline temperatures could increase the risk of widespread or unusually intense fires in normally damp regions where such fires are not common, with large impacts on both ecosystems unaccustomed to extensive fire and on human societies exposed to them either directly or indirectly via choking smoke pollution, especially in tropical locations where peatlands can burn for months on end,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, in the briefing.
“One particular concern regarding wildfires that will likely arise during any strong El Niño event in the modern era, again worsened by climate change, would be drought in tropical regions, particularly including the rainforests of the Amazon and Oceania, as well as parts of Southeast Asia,” Swain added.
“In 2023, the fires forced us to evacuate our entire hospital. It is becoming ever clearer why the WHO says that climate change is the greatest health threat of our time, and that we won’t be able to adapt in a healthy way to current greenhouse gas emission trajectories,” said Howard.
“The costs of this climate-driven wildfire explosion are ripping into national and household budgets alike, pushing food supply down and costs up, at a time when the fossil fuel cost crisis is already hitting billions of people and every economy,” Stiell added.
“By transitioning to clean energy, we can save millions of lives a year from fossil fuel-related air pollution alone. It is time to push hard, push fast and not stop in our drive for a healthy response to climate change,” said Howard.