El Nino, a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, is contributing to hotter and drier conditions and increasing the risk of major wildfires, with more than 150 million hectares burned globally in the first months of 2026, more than 50% above recent averages and nearly double the same period in 2024, according to World Weather Attribution research.
The burned area exceeds the previous record in global vegetation fire monitoring, which began in 2012, by more than 20%.
Africa recorded its largest burned area since 2012, at 85 million hectares, 23% above the previous record set in 2025, with record-level fires in countries including Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan.
In Asia, 44 million hectares were affected, around 40%more than in the previous record yea of 2014, with extreme fires in Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, India and northeastern China.
In the United States, a March heatwave and severe early drought pushed burned areas to approximately double the previous record for the same period.
The probability of the March heatwave being driven by climate change is assessed as seven times higher than without it, and the increased co-occurrence of hot and dry conditions has also been documented. With around 50% of the US currently under drought conditions, the risk of further deterioration remains high.
In Australia, extreme heat and drought early in the year drove major fires in New South Wales and Victoria, with the fire season extending into autumn.
The global fire season has yet to reach its peak, and the scale of burning recorded in early 2026, combined with El Nino projections, suggests the year could prove severe.
Even in the absence of a super El Nino, the event is expected to heighten wildfire risk and increase the likelihood of extreme heat and drought later in the year across Australia, the northwestern United States, Canada and the Amazon rainforest.
- Rapidly developing fire conditions outpace initial wildfire response
Speaking to Anadolu, Prof. Dr. Ali Kavgaci of Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, said climate change influences wildfires through three pathways — improving ignition conditions, enabling rapid spread once a fire starts, and creating conditions that make fires difficult to contain.
He also noted that lightning-caused fires have also increased globally as a direct result of climate change.
"Rising temperatures, heatwaves and increasing days of low humidity are causing combustible material to dry out well below normal levels, creating highly favorable conditions for ignition. Once started, fires can spread so rapidly across forests that even initial firefighting efforts may prove insufficient, turning a small ignition into a major wildfire," he said.
Kavgaci noted that atmospheric processes are expected to shift during summer due to El Nino, bringing hotter and drier-than-normal conditions to regions such as the Mediterranean and sudden and intense rainfall to temperate zones such as the Black Sea region.
- Risk rising in Türkiye
Kavgaci underlined that Türkiye faces significant wildfire risk during summer months, warning that El Nino is compounding that risk.
"The hotter and drier conditions that El Nino brings increase this risk further. When you also consider that a rainy pre-summer period increases biomass production, and that this additional biomass combined with heatwaves will raise the amount of dry combustible material, it would not be wrong to say the risk and danger increase considerably," he explained.
"The most important thing that can be done at this point is to minimize human-caused sources of wildfire ignition," he added.
Kavgaci also noted that a large proportion of fires in the first half of the year have occurred in areas not historically associated with wildfires, a sign of shifting fire regimes.
He warned that fires are increasingly occurring outside their traditional seasons, at greater intensity and more frequently, and that the combined effect of human factors and climate change on fire frequency and burned area may grow in the future.
Kavgaci noted that coastal areas along the Aegean and Mediterranean in Türkiye carry the highest fire risk, but stressed that risk has also risen significantly in other regions.
"Major wildfires in previous years in provinces such as Karabuk, Bolu, Eskisehir, Bilecik and Bursa demonstrate this. Wildfire risk in Türkiye is high every year, and the human-forest interaction advancing at the expense of forests, climate change-related conditions and this year's El Nino effect all point to a further rise," he said, urging fire prevention efforts to begin before the wildfire season starts.
Reporting by Yesim Yuksel
Writing by Zeynep Ozturhan
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr