Explained: Wildfires peaked in August, half were in Asia

Compared to August 2018, there were almost five times as many wildfires across the world in August 2019, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced citing data from its Sentinel-3 World Fire Atlas. August and September 2019 were also the months during which fires in the Amazon rainforest were at the centre of worldwide attention. A detailed analysis of the August 2019 fires, however, shows that it was Asia that accounted for nearly half of these fires, the ESA said.

“Fires in the Amazon sparked a global outcry this summer, but fires have also been blazing in the Arctic, France, Greece, Indonesia as well as many other areas in the world,” the ESA said.

PEAK & DISTRIBUTION: The ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission recorded 79,000 fires in August this year, compared to just over 16,000 fires detected during the same period last year. These figures were achieved by using data from the Sentinel-3 World Fire Atlas Prototype, which also provided a breakdown of these fires per continent.

The data revealed that 49% of the fires were detected in Asia, around 28% were detected in South America, 16% in Africa, and the remaining were recorded in North America, Europe and Oceania.

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