In January, an unprecedented heat dome engulfed Australia, causing temperatures near 50 degrees C (122 degrees F), while heat and catastrophic wildfires gripped parts of South America, burning remote parts of Argentine Patagonia and killing 21 people in coastal cities in Chile. Additionally, South Africa has been experiencing its worst wildfires in years.
The extremes are occurring even as the world remains under the cooling influence of a weak La Niña, a climate cycle marked by colder waters in the central and eastern Pacific that began in December 2024. Despite this moderating factor, temperatures are reaching record levels in several places.
“This means that the effect of human-caused climate change is overwhelming natural variability,” said climate scientist Theodore Keeping of Imperial College London and the international research collaboration World Weather Attribution, which specializes in research on wildfires and extreme heat.
“As we move into a neutral or even El Niño phase, we will expect the incidence of extreme heat events around the world to amplify further,” Keeping added.
El Niño typically has the opposite effect of La Niña: warming the central and eastern Pacific and increasing global temperatures.
This year is forecast to be about 1.46 degrees C (2.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, which would make it the fourth year in a row to be above 1.4 degrees C (2.5 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, according to Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the UK’s national weather and climate service.
The 2015 international climate treaty, known as the Paris Agreement, aimed to keep warming below 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels.
“If a large ‘El Niño’ were to develop rapidly in 2026, then it is still possible that 2026 could be a record-breaking year,” Scaife said. The World Meteorological Organization said last month that the past three years were the warmest on record.
THE FIRE FROM THE FORESTS TO THE WATER
While most wildfires are caused by human activity, they are also a natural part of many ecosystems. However, persistent heat, drought and extreme temperatures are turning once manageable fires into increasingly uncontrollable and destructive events.
Many ecosystems are not adapted to such hot, dry conditions, allowing fires to grow and become more intense, often causing permanent damage, Keeping said.
The fires that devastated Argentina’s Los Alerces National Park illustrate the change, according to meteorologist Carolina Vera of the Center for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research at the University of Buenos Aires.
The park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is home to trees that have lived more than 3,000 years.
Local authorities determined that lightning caused the fire. Initially the fire was under control. But Vera said a heat wave and strong winds caused it to spread about 20 kilometers (12 miles) in a single day, making it the worst wildfire in two decades.
The region has been affected by drought since 2008. Temperatures during the first two weeks of January were about 6 degrees C (11 degrees F) above normal.
“These fires used to be self-extinguishing and were part of the natural dynamics of the forest,” Vera said.
“This is an example of how climate change can alter a natural fire, because it appears to have been caused by lightning,” Vera said.
There are no towns in that remote area.
In late January, fires broke out in the southern part of neighboring Chile and crossed into the Concepción metropolitan area, the country’s third largest metropolitan region, destroying hundreds of homes and killing 21 people in coastal communities.
Keeping said the fires mirror recent disasters in places such as Los Angeles, Athens and the Hawaiian island of Maui.
“Where there has been the greatest loss of life, it is almost always because evacuation is difficult or impossible,” Keeping said. “This is particularly true in regions affected by strong downslope winds toward the coast.”
FIRE SCREWS
Around 80% of Punta de Parra, a small coastal town in southern Chile surrounded by hills and forests, was destroyed.
Residents of Punta de Parra said they had little time to evacuate. Doralisa Silva, 34, said she learned about a fire in a nearby community the night the flames reached the city.
“Out of nowhere, the forest started burning and all the houses caught fire,” Silva said. “The fire reached us in the blink of an eye. We couldn’t do anything.”
Silva said his family was one of the last to try to flee because they did not have a vehicle. Silva said flames blocked her exit as embers rained down as she and her partner Hermes Barrientos fled with their 2-year-old daughter.
Barrientos said winds of nearly 70 kilometers per hour (43.5 mph) hit the area, creating fire whirlwinds that spread to the beach and trapped residents. The family and others eventually found shelter in a large dirt field in the center of town and spent the night watching their community burn.
A FUTURE FILLED WITH FIRE
Record heat in southeastern Australia has also fueled the country’s worst fires since the deadly 2019-2020 season, when 33 people died.
Additionally, the 2025-2026 fire season has been the most serious in South Africa in a decade, according to officials, killing wildlife and affecting tourist destinations such as Mossel Bay and Franschhoek.
“The hot, dry and windy conditions that drive the most extreme wildfires are becoming more intense and more likely,” Keeping said. “And it’s happening all over the world.”
The Southern Hemisphere has warmed by 0.15 to 0.17 degrees C (0.27 to 0.30 degrees F) per decade since the 1970s, compared with 0.25 to 0.30 degrees C (0.45 to 0.54 degrees F) in the Northern Hemisphere, largely because its vast oceans absorb heat more slowly and due to meltwater from Antarctica.
Still, southern land masses are warming at a similar rate to northern land masses, and contrasts between warming land and cold meltwater can intensify weather patterns, leading to prolonged heat waves, droughts or floods.
Maintaining such adaptation is essential, including for authorities who manage vegetation near cities and develop effective evacuation plans, and for builders who use fire-resistant materials. Wildfires are causing increasing economic damage. A 2026 report by insurance broker Aon estimated global insured losses from wildfires at $42 billion in 2025, up from an average of $4 billion annually between 2000 and 2024. Last year’s Los Angeles fires were the costliest on record.
Swiss Re, the world’s second-largest reinsurer, found that wildfires accounted for about 1% of global insured losses from natural disasters before 2015, but now account for 7%, and fire-related economic losses have increased by about $170 million a year since 1970.
“You can’t actually stop a lot of these really big, intense wildfires. They’re just too big,” Keeping said.
The most important way forward, Keeping said, is to “have a serious conversation about how to limit future climate change to prevent this problem from getting worse.”