Is 2025 the UK’s most extreme wildfire year yet? New report says yes
Orla Dwyer, Ho Woo Nam and Tom Prater report that by August 2025, the area burnt by wildfires in the UK was nearly four times the 2012-2024 average for the same period and 50 per cent higher than the previous record set by this point in 2019 for Carbon Brief.
Image by Leslie Barrie | Wikimedia Commons
Orla Dwyer has a BA in journalism from Dublin City University, Ireland, and is a food, land and nature journalist for Carbon Brief. Ho Woo Nam holds an MSc in applied data science with renewable energy from the University of Exeter, UK, and previously spent 10 years in the insurance sector helping insurers manage their financial risk using data analysis and statistical modelling. Tom Prater holds an MSc in digital journalism from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in art and visual culture from the University of the West of England.
Wildfires have scorched more than 40,000 hectares of land so far this year across the UK, an area more than twice the size of the Scottish city of Glasgow. This is already a record amount of land burnt in a single year, far exceeding the previous high, Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS) data shows.
It is also almost four times the average area burnt in wildfires by this stage of the year over 2012-24 and 50 per cent higher than the previous record amount burnt by this time in 2019. The burnt area overtook the previous annual record in April, BBC News reported at the time, and has continued to soar in the months since.
UK wildfires in 2025 so far have already burnt by far the largest area of land over any calendar year since GWIS records began in 2012. The previous record year was 2019, followed by 2022, while 2024 saw the lowest area size burnt.
Climate change can increase the risk and effect of wildfires. Warmer temperatures and drought can leave land parched and dry out vegetation, which helps fires spread more rapidly. Climate change is making these types of extreme conditions more likely to occur, as well as more severe.
Fire services in England and Wales responded to 564 wildfires from January to June 2025, an increase from 69 fires in the same period last year, the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) said in a statement in June.
Most wildfires in the UK are caused by human activity, whether accidental or deliberate, according to the NFCC. Some common ignition sources are disposable barbecues, lit cigarettes and campfires.
Jessica Richter, a research analyst at Global Forest Watch, says that, while fires are also a key part of some ecosystems, climate change is the major driver behind the increasing fire activity around the globe. She tells Carbon Brief: “As we see more fires, we’re going to see more carbon being emitted and that’s just going to be, for lack of a better phrasing, adding fuel to the fire.”
The UK has also recorded its highest-ever wildfire emissions this year, according to Copernicus, which were ‘primarily driven’ by major wildfires in Scotland from late June to early July.
These were the largest wildfires ever recorded in the country, reported the Scotsman. They ‘ravaged’ land in Moray and the Highlands in the north of the country, the newspaper added. Scotland experienced an extreme wildfire in Galloway Forest Park in April, which was “so intense it could be seen from space”, the Financial Times said.
Elsewhere, in April, the Belfast News Letter reported that firefighters tackled almost 150 fires on the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland. More recently, BBC News reported that firefighters in Dorset, England received ‘non-stop’ wildfire calls in the first weekend of August, with one blaze “engulf[ing] an area the size of 30 football pitches”.
Wildfires have also caused devastation across many parts of Europe in recent weeks, including Albania, Cyprus, France, Greece, Spain and Türkiye, as well as in the US and Canada.
The analysis was originally published in Carbon Brief and can be found here.