Our World
in Data
Data

Annual CO₂ emissions from wildfires

See all data and research on:
Climate Change

What you should know about this indicator

CO₂ emissions contribute to the greenhouse effect, influencing global warming and climate change.

Annual CO₂ emissions from wildfires
Carbon dioxide released by in tonnes. The 2024 data is incomplete and was last updated 30 October 2024.
Source
Global Wildfire Information System (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 30, 2024
Next expected update
November 2024
Date range
2003–2024
Unit
tonnes

Related research and writing

Featured image

Wildfires

Veronika Samborska and Hannah Ritchie

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The dataset provides a weekly comprehensive overview of fire activity and its environmental impact, incorporating data from the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS) and satellite imagery from MODIS and VIIRS. It includes metrics such as the area of land burnt, cumulative burnt areas, carbon dioxide emissions from fires, cumulative carbon emissions, the number of fires, and cumulative fire counts.

Retrieved on
October 30, 2024
Retrieved from
https://gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/apps/gwis.statistics/seasonaltrend
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Global Wildfire Information System

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Annual CO₂ emissions from wildfires”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Veronika Samborska (2024) - “Climate Change”. Data adapted from Global Wildfire Information System. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-carbon-dioxide-emissions [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Global Wildfire Information System (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Global Wildfire Information System (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Annual CO₂ emissions from wildfires” [dataset]. Global Wildfire Information System, “Seasonal wildfire trends” [original data]. Retrieved October 30, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-carbon-dioxide-emissions