2019: Year of wildfires

The world's largest rainforest was ablaze for weeks in 2019, burning at a rate not seen in years. Between January and August, there was an 82% increase in fires in the Brazilian Amazon compared to the same time period last year, and August itself saw more than 30,000 fires reported. Most are thought to have been lit by farmers clearing land for crops and cattle.

The Amazon wasn't the only region in Brazil on fire this year. There were even more fires in the Cerrado savannah in the country's south. One of the most biodiverse areas of the world, Cerrado is also one of the most endangered. About half its green areas have already been lost, mostly to soy farming, but the savannah is also very vulnerable to fire.

Month-long wildfires in the Indonesian regions of Sumatra and Borneo destroyed more than 40,000 hectares this year. Already-endangered orangutans were killed, those that survived have a vastly reduced habitat. The carbon-rich peat under the forest's roots makes these fires particularly hard to extinguish — and dangerous for the climate: 700 million tons of CO2 were released into the atmosphere.

The world's largest tropical wetlands, the Pantanal, also went up in flames this year. The Pantanal is located mostly in Brazil but extends to Bolivia and Paraguay. The number of fires there broke all records this year, with over 8,000 registered. Some 1.2 million hectares of forest were destroyed in Bolivia alone. Scientists called it the country's biggest disaster ever for biodiversity.

Bushfires ravaged the US state of California this year. They were caused by sparks emitted from old infrastructure, fanned by hot and dry winds and accelerated by the dry conditions in the region and quickly turned into an inferno, destroying homes and land, killing three people, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate and leaving almost a million people without power.

Even within the Arctic circle, fires were burning this year. In Siberia, hundreds of fires over three months destroyed more than 4 million hectares of forest, creating a cloud of soot and ash as large as the entire EU, and Russian military had to be deployed. Across Alaska, there were 400 wildfires this year. Greenland and Canada didn't escape the blaze either.

Australia saw unprecedented bushfires this year that burned at a particularly high intensity. Drought, searing temperatures and dry winds saw more than a million hectares burned, taking the lives of four people and up to 1,000 koalas. Koalas are considered vulnerable to extinction and this year's bushfires put the future of the slow and helpless animals even more in danger.