State of Wildfires 2025-26: Regional Summaries of Burned Area, Fire Emissions, and Individual Fire Characteristics for National, Administrative and Biogeographical Regions

This dataset supports the State of Wildfires 2025-26 report under review at Earth System Science Data (Burton et al., under review). It is an update of the State of Wildfires 2024-25 report (Kelley et al. 2025). The dataset provides annual data and final-year anomalies in burned area (BA), fire carbon (C) emissions, and fire properties (e.g. distributional statistics for fire count, size, rate of growth). Annual data relate to the global fire season defined as March-February (e.g., March 2024-February 2026), aligning with an annuall lull in the global fire calendar (see Kelley et al., 2025). The complete methodology is described by Burton et al. (under review). Citation Work utilising our regional summaries should cite both Burton et al. (under review) AND the primary reference for the variable(s) of interest as follows: Giglio et al. (2018) for MODIS MCD64A1 BA. van der Werf et al. (2017) for GFED4.1s fire C emissions. Kaiser er al. (2012) for GFAS fire C emissions. van der Werf et al. (2025) AND Kaiser er al. (2012) for the average of GFED5 and GFAS fire C emissions. Andela et al. (2019) for the Global Fire Atlas. Giglio et al. (2016) for the Fire Radiative Power (FRP) observations. Torres-Vázquez et al. (in revision) for the MRBA60 BA product. Giglio et al. (2024) for VIIRS VNP64A1 BA. Input Data Burned Area (BA) BA data from NASA’s MODIS BA product (MCD64A1) are extended from Giglio et al. (2018) and are available from NASA EarthData. Period: 2002-February 2026 Resolution: 500m, daily BA data from ESA's BA product (MRBA60) are extended from Torres-Vázquez et al. (in revision), which harmonises products FireCCI51 (Lizundia-Loiola et al., 2020) and FireCCIS311 (Lizundia-Loiola et al., 2022). Period: 2019-February 2026 Resolution: 300m, daily BA data from NASA’s VIIRS BA product (VNP64A1) are extended from Giglio et al. (2025) and are available from NASA EarthData. Period: 2012-February 2026 (only the data after 2019 are used for consistency in the comparisons between MCD64A1, FireCCIS311, and VNP64A1). Resolution: 500m, daily Fire Carbon (C) Emissions GFED5 fire C emissions data are extended from van der Werf et al. (2025) and are available at https://globalfiredata.org/. Period: 2003-February 2026 Resolution: 0.25 degree, daily GFAS fire C emissions data are extended from Kaiser et al. (2012) and are available from the CAMS Atmosphere Data Store (ADS). Period: 2003-December 2025 from ADS; January-February 2026 on request Resolution: 0.1 degree, daily Global Fire Atlas (Individual Fire Properties) Global Fire Atlas data are extended from Andela et al. (2019) and are available from the repository maintained by Andela and Jones (2026). Period: 2002-February 2026 Driven by 500m MODIS BA data (collection 6.1) Fire Intensities FRP from NASA’s MODIS MCD14ML product (Giglio et al., 2016) and are available at NASA FIRMS. Period: 2002-February 2026 Resolution: 1km, daily Regional Analysis We performed "cookie-cutting" (spatial and temporal masking) of the above input data sets to features in each of the following regional layers (e.g. per country in the "Countries" layer). The statistics derived from cookie-cutting are listed below. Full details in Burton et al. (under review). Layer Short Form Source Biomes NA Olson et al. (2001) Ecoregions NA Olson et al. (2001) Continents NA ArcGIS Hub (2024) Continental Biomes NA See above Countries NA EU Eurostat (2020) UC Davis Global Administrative Areas (GADM) Level 1 GADM-L1 UC Davis (2022) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group I (WGI) Reference Regions IPCC AR6 WGI Regions Iturbide et al. (2020) Global C Project Regional C Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP2) Reference Regions RECCAP2 Regions Ciais et al. (2022) Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) Basis Regions GFED Regions van der Werf et al. (2006) Regional Statistics and Anomalies Burned Area (BA) Calculated regional totals for each fire season. Relative and standardized anomalies from historical data (since 2002). Ranking amongst all recorded fire seasons. Onset, peak, and cessation based on monthly deviations from climatological means. Carbon Emissions Calculated regional totals for each fire season. Relative and standardized anomalies from historical data (since 2003). Ranking amongst all recorded fire seasons. Onset, peak, and cessation based on monthly deviations from climatological means. Statistics available for GFAS, GFED, and their mean. Individual Fire Properties Based on values of individual fire size and rate of growth ignition from the ignition point vectors of the Global Fire Atlas. Calculated regional count. Calculated regional maxima and 95th percentiles of fire size and rate of growth for each fire season. Relative and standardized anomalies from historical data (since 2002). Ranked anomalies among all recorded fire seasons. Fire Intensity Based on active fire observations of FRP, which are pooled within each fire of the Global Fire Atlas. For each fire, the 95th percentile value of all FRP observations is the assigned intensity value (i.e. a "peak fire intensity" omitting any spurious high-end values). Regionally, the peak fire intensity values are averaged across individual fires. Relative and standardized anomalies from historical data (since 2002). Ranked anomalies among all recorded fire seasons.