The Amazonian wildfires have been getting plenty of attention and stoking lots of concern on social media. But NASA recently put a new spin on the situation, announcing that there are more wildfires in Africa than anywhere else in the world.

As climate change drives temperature increases and lower precipitation in southern Africa, research has found that there is likely to be an increase in the number of wildfires in regions that are already hot, dry and water scarce.

2023 was an exceptional year for Canada. The amount of area burned was more than double the previous record since the 1970s (this is probably also true with even earlier data). Below I’ve graphed the area burned by year, since 1972, based on data from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System.