Attribution of observed pan-Arctic extreme fire events to anthropogenic forcings

26 March 2026

Photo: UHH / Lukas Fielder

Over the past two decades, the pan-Arctic has experienced rapid climatic change, accompanied by an unprecedented increase in extreme wildfire activity. Lukas Fiedler and colleagues apply a probabilistic extreme event attribution framework to assess the influence of anthropogenic forcings on the exceptional pan-Arctic wildfire seasons of 2019, 2020, and 2021. Their analysis indicates that anthropogenic forcings were a necessary precondition for these events and substantially increased their likelihood of occurrence. Moreover, their findings identify changes in temperature and humidity as the primary drivers of the observed escalation in extreme fire weather risk, consistent with a pronounced rise in vapour pressure deficit across the pan-Arctic region.

Fiedler, L., Barkhordarian, A., Brovkin, V., & Baehr, J. (2026). Attribution of observed pan-arctic extreme fire events to anthropogenic forcings. Environmental Research Letters. 21 064001 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae4d64