While some forest fires around the globe have gained attention since the beginning of its occurrence, there are alot more of them which still have not gotten as much awareness and media coverage as it should. 

The Amazon forest fires caught everyone’s attention for the magnitude and the fact that it went unnoticed for the longest period of time. 

Despite the fact that the raging fires in Amazon forests had started back in January, it only came to light a few weeks back because these fires, which have crossed a number of 72,000 fires since January have deeply impacted the forests. 

Usually these fires occur every year but this year it happened due to illegal burning of forests for cattle ranching and various other ‘man made’ phenomenon.   

Such was the extent of the fires that it reached nearby cities like Sao Paolo and created a cloud of darkness in broad daylight. Not just that, the fires had gotten so intense that it could even be seen from space. 

The Amazon forest fires have been so intense that it even was the major topic of discussion at the G7 Summit.

On August 25th and 26th, there was a sudden rise in Siberian Forest Fires which spread over more than 400,000 hectares of area.

Russia has faced wildfires since the month of June, but on August 25 and 26th, there was a sudden rise in forest fires in the Siberian region which spread over more than 400,000 hectares of area.  

Even though 97 fires were extinguished within 24 hours, dark clouds blanketed the cities of Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk long after. These cities are home to millions of Russians but is also hundreds of miles from the fires’ epicenter. 

Not just that, due to these forest fires in Russia, 50 megatons of carbon dioxide was released in June and 79 megatons of carbon dioxide in July which is equal to the exhaust fumes from 36 million cars. The impact in the rise of the forest fires in August are yet to be revealed. 

Indonesia, which has the world’s oldest tropical forests saw its worst annual fire season since 2015. 

Reportedly, the wildfires had burned 42,740 hectares of land across the country between January and May.  

Similar to Brazil and Russia, the forest fires also brought along with them a dense blanket of smoke which covered Malaysia and Singapore. 

Not just that, the number of hot spots too increased to 2,002 which were mostly detected in the provinces of Riau, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan. 

But Indonesia has learnt from the 2015 fire crisis and the government has taken severe steps to cease the fires by water bombing on a daily basis. 

From Jan through August 2019, California forests saw a total of 65,360 acres burned statewide on all types of land, including private property, national forests, national parks and other lands in the recent forest fires of the state. 

While 2019 saw massive forest fires, California saw one of its worst forest fires in 2018. The fires covered over 1,096,033 acres. Though, even the fires were not as bad as last year, it is a continuous affair in the state.  

African forest fires cover 70% of the total 100,000 fires burning around the world.  

Africa, which is also termed as the ‘fire continent’ is one of the most neglected when it comes to forest fires.

Reportedly, Angola had almost three times more fires than Brazil just last week which indicated around 6,000 fires in Angola, more than 3,000 in Congo and just over 2,000 in Brazil. 

The greenhouse gas emissions come from so-called biomass burning, which includes fires that are intentionally set to clear land for agriculture. If the seriousness of this is overlooked any further, then it will lead to irrevocable climate change.