How Climate Change Makes Wildfires More Dangerous

Climate change is intensifying wildfires across the United States, turning routine fire seasons into prolonged, dangerous events that threaten Americans’ lives and health both during the season and in the days, months, and years afterward. And the damage is vast: More intense wildfires put residents at risk of long-term physical and mental health complications; strain local health care infrastructure; and lead to economic fallout that extends beyond property damage to insurance markets, water security, and public services. These effects are particularly harmful to disadvantaged communities.

Transitioning away from fossil fuels, which is the largest contributor to warming temperatures, can help Americans avoid the more catastrophic impacts of wildfires.¹ The modern-day phenomenon of soil-scorching wildfires has catastrophic human impacts that cannot be treated as isolated events. They are interconnected crises with widespread consequences.

Climate change is fanning the flames of increasingly severe wildfires

The beginning of May typically marks the start of wildfire season in the United States,² but recent seasons have not been like the ones Americans experienced 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago.³ Wildfires are spreading nearly 250 percent faster than they were in 2001,⁴ with many parts of Texas, Oregon, California, and Washington experiencing fires twice as often as they did in the 1970s.⁵ North American wildfires are starting earlier in the year, lasting longer, and burning larger swaths of land.⁶ From 1990 to 2020, the number of U.S. homes and lands in wildfires increased 46 percent and 31 percent, respectively.⁷ Since 1985, the area burned annually by wildfires in the West has increased eightfold,⁸ and about half of that increase is due to climate change.⁹

Human-caused climate change is one of the dominant factors behind these increased wildfire risks.¹⁰ ​​Studies show that climate change is causing warmer, drier conditions and less frequent rainfall that dry out vegetation,¹¹ create “thirsty trees,”¹² and lead to longer, more active fire seasons in western North America and beyond.¹³ Though other dynamic factors such as fire suppression, tree mortality from bark beetle infestations, and a growing wildland-urban interface that exposes more homes to wildfires are at play,¹⁴ scientists are able to attribute wildfires to climate change because the factors that influence fire risk—such as soil moisture, vegetation dryness, and reduced snowpack—are climate-sensitive, measurable characteristics.¹⁵ With the help of long-term records and regional data, scientists can analyze these characteristics and estimate the degree to which climate change increases risk.¹⁶ The wildfires that tore through Los Angeles and surrounding communities in early 2025, for instance, were made 35 percent more likely from fossil-fueled climate change, according to scientists who combined both climate modeling and observation-based estimates of factors such as precipitation, humidity, and wind speed.¹⁷

In the Pacific Northwest in particular, wildfires fueled by rising temperatures and drier summers could destroy up to 1.1 million acres annually by 2040.¹⁸ One multimodel analysis projects an average 107 percent increase in forest fire-burned areas by 2050 and finds that increasingly extreme fires could eventually slow down by mid-century because there would be smaller amounts of forests left to burn.¹⁹

Wildfires worsened by climate change are harmful to nature and people

Climate change has made wildfires more intense and common, and has contributed to wildfires happening in places that do not normally have them, such as parts of Alaska.²⁰ Several habitats are equipped for wildfire and even need it to stay healthy, but worse wildfires that can cause significantly more harm, damaging much of the plant life and forcing out much of the animal life.²¹ It takes longer—sometimes decades—for the landscape to recover from these wildfires, and they can leave room for invasive species to take over.²²

Damages from more severe wildfires are not just bad for nature, but also for people. Damage to plant life can result in erosion because the soil is not held in place by plant roots.²⁷ The loss of greenery also can raise the chances of flooding because there are not as many plants to intercept the rain, and soil does not absorb as much water after a fire.²⁸ Burned soils also do not filter water as well, which can decrease water quality, especially when combined with burned materials, any associated contaminants from the fire itself, and additional soil washing into bodies of water.²⁹ A combination of these factors make landslides more likely after a wildfire.³⁰

Pollution from wildfires threatens the quality of air, water, and public health and strains health care infrastructure

More severe wildfires are pumping out dangerous amounts of pollution that degrade the nation’s air and water quality, public health, and infrastructure. Wildfire smoke contributes to 1.53 million deaths worldwide each year and nearly 16,000 deaths in the United States—a figure projected to reach around 28,000 within the next 25 years.³¹ Fires also release hazardous pollutants from burning plastics and electronics, contaminating air and drinkable water.³² During California’s 2018 Camp Fire, the level of volatile organic compounds, which can increase the risk of cancer in large amounts, triggered a two-year water advisory.³³ Similarly, in August of 2023, the Hawaiian town of Lahaina experienced the deadliest U.S. fire in more than a century, with unsafe water advisories remaining in effect from August 11, 2023, to August 2, 2024.³⁴ Standard precautions do little to block these chemicals, which can also be absorbed through the skin.³⁵ As of 2022, the World Health Organization has classified firefighting as carcinogenic.³⁶

Wildfire smoke poses a widespread and escalating threat to public health, carrying fine particulate matter, soot, and toxic gases that travel far beyond fire zones—as seen in June 2023 when smoke from Canadian fires reached the U.S. Northeast and in May 2024 when raging blazes in Mexico sent haze across the southern United States, degrading air quality from Texas to Florida.³⁷

While larger soot particles irritate the eyes, nose, and throat, small soot particles penetrate the lungs and bloodstream, making them 10 times more harmful than other inhalation sources.³⁸ Exposure to smaller particles is linked to premature death, cognitive decline and dementia, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, adverse birth outcomes, and lung diseases such as asthma.³⁹

Wildfires also deeply strain health care infrastructure and people’s mental and physical health.⁴⁰ Fire events drive up emergency department visits for anxiety and lead to increased antidepressant use, with post-traumatic stress disorder lasting up to a decade.⁴¹ Health infrastructure is vulnerable: Hospitals and clinics shut down, medical devices fail during power outages, and road closures delay emergency response.⁴² During the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, hospitals were overwhelmed and thousands of evacuees lacked critical prescription medications.⁴³ Exposure to wildfire smoke has been shown to lower student test scores by impairing air quality, which affects concentration, sleep, and overall cognitive function.⁴⁴ These cascading impacts underscore that wildfires are not just environmental threats—they are complex, ongoing public health emergencies that demand coordinated, preventive action.

American homes and businesses face rising insurance costs and steep economic losses from wildfires

Wildfires cost the United States between $394 billion and $893 billion each year in economic losses.⁴⁵ In the Southwest, they now account for the highest annual insurance losses of any natural disaster.⁴⁶ In Los Angeles alone, the January 2025 fires destroyed more than 17,000 structures and have led to an average insurance industry loss of $32.5 billion.⁴⁷ With disasters becoming more frequent and severe, insurers are scaling back coverage or exiting markets altogether.

Insurance premiums rose 13 percent nationwide from 2020 to 2023.⁴⁸ Because homeowners insurance is typically required for home loans, these changes do not just burden individual families—they can affect entire housing markets.⁴⁹ As insurance becomes harder to obtain and afford, demand for homes in high-risk areas drops, dragging down property values, reshaping the economic landscape in fire-prone regions, and leaving more households weighing whether to “go bare”—living without insurance and risking total loss.⁵⁰ This leaves families, especially those with limited resources, dangerously exposed.

Essential efforts to protect homes have their own hidden costs. Fires near households often burn materials such as polyurethane foam, commonly used in furniture, which produces toxic runoff that threatens long-term water supply and ecological health.⁵¹ Wildfire damage to watersheds and water quality costs up to $146.9 billion annually, and water supply losses can rival or exceed the direct costs of some fires.⁵² Large wildfires can raise drinking water production expenses by as much as $100 million, making their increasing frequency an expensive concern for public utilities.⁵³ Direct fire-related civilian and firefighter injuries and deaths add another $607.9 million in annual wildfire costs, compounding the toll beyond damaged structures.⁵⁴

Americans in marginalized communities experience unequal exposure, response, and recovery efforts to wildfires

Response and relief efforts can overlook marginalized communities.⁵⁵ Americans who lack adequate housing; insurance; and disaster-preparation resources such as legal assistance, translation services, and housing resilience programs tend to suffer the most from wildfires, as well as Americans who live in poverty, live in a mobile home, are older, disabled, or are of color.⁵⁶ Low-income Americans and households of color face cost barriers to wildfire risk mitigation tactics such as using more fire-resistant building materials or replacing roofs with more fire-resistant ones.⁵⁷ Homes in disadvantaged communities replace roofs at a 28 percent lower rate.⁵⁸

In addition to being underprepared for wildfires, not all Americans are equally protected from them either. More populated communities are 16 percent more likely to have wildfires extinguished, but this likelihood can increase by another 15 percent with every $500,000 increase in property values, on average.⁵⁹ The rate of fuel treatments—which are human-made breaks in vegetation that can reduce the speed and size of a wildfire—increase as the percentage of residents who are white, have higher incomes, or have higher education levels increases.⁶⁰ Effective preparedness and response to wildfire disasters requires community-level interventions that address the inequities and needs of marginalized communities.

Key components for taking action on wildfire

Both climate change and the federal government’s historic approach to wildfires are making current wildfires worse.⁶⁵ Essential components of any comprehensive strategy include transitioning away from fossil fuels and putting additional resources—specifically staff and funding—toward wildfire response.⁶⁶ However, there are some specific issue areas that are important to address in order to significantly mitigate the risk of and damage from wildfires, including:

• Preparation: Reacting to wildfires is often prioritized over preparing for the next one, but that needs to change in order to better protect communities.⁶⁷ The federal government can and should make changes to increase its focus on preparation, but there are actions that cities, states, and organizations can implement or advocate for in the meantime, such as updating plans for how land is used or additional forest restoration.⁶⁸ Property owners can also improve conditions by clearing out flammable materials from their property.⁶⁹
• Coordination: The many organizations working on wildfires—such as local, state, federal, and Tribal governments; researchers; and nonprofits—need to communicate better with each other, as well as with communities.⁷⁰ In addition, groups addressing a broader range of issues connected to wildfires should be brought into those discussions.⁷¹ Continued technological and scientific advancements, along with their implementation, and the streamlining of some processes will also facilitate more effective wildfire response.⁷²
• Forest restoration: Mitigating the elevated risk from both climate change and the federal government’s historic practices means continuing, improving, and expanding healthy forest restoration.⁷³ That work involves multiple strategies, including prescribed burns, fires set on purpose and managed by trained personnel; cultural burns, fires traditionally and currently set by Indigenous people; and forest thinning, selective clearing of some growth and/or natural material.⁷⁴ When these steps are properly implemented and guided by science—preferably in combination with each other—they can reduce the risk that wildfires pose and make the landscape healthier.⁷⁵

Conclusion

The escalating threat of wildfires in the United States is a direct consequence of fossil-fueled climate change and a warning signal that demands urgent, collective action.

Wildfires damage health and threaten lives, drive up insurance costs and displace families, pollute air and water, and exacerbate long-standing inequities. But solutions are within reach.

Investing in healthy forest restoration, improving coordination among response agencies, and shifting focus from short-term reaction to long-term preparation can reduce risks and protect lives. These strategies must be paired with bold climate action to curb fossil fuel emissions and slow global warming. Protecting communities and building long-term resilience requires treating wildfire mitigation and climate policy not as separate challenges, but as one united mission.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the many individuals who shared their expertise or reviewed this report, including Mariam Rashid, Jill Rosenthal, Alex Thornton, Lucero Marquez, Drew McConville, Nicole Gentile, Trevor Higgins, Kat So, Anh Nguyen, and Cindy Murphy-Tofig.