It was to be feared. A study published in the journal Nature Communications confirms that global warming is significantly increasing the risk of fire in practically all the jungles , forests, mountains and grasslands of the planet.
After collecting data from 1979 to the present and carefully analyzing them, scientists have reached two main conclusions: the regions susceptible to being devastated by fire have doubled in the last 36 years (mainly in the savannas), and the season of fires are getting longer in a quarter of the lands covered with vegetation. Currently, an estimated 350 million hectares are burned each year, roughly equivalent to the area of India.
There is an exception: a tenth of the "green areas" on the planet suffer fewer fires today than in the past. This improvement mainly affects the African Sahel, which has recovered from the droughts of the 1980s and 1990s. Experts also emphasize that the increase in fires has an amplifying effect on climate change: smoke and thawing of permafrost ( permanent ice cap) increase CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which contributes to raising the temperature and, consequently, the danger of fires. A burning vicious cycle.
