The Maui wildfires have killed at least 55 people, the toll is expected to rise and wreak havoc in the resort town of Lahaina, which will take years and billions of dollars to build. rebuilt, Hawaii officials said.
Forest fires are becoming more frequent and widespread, causing significant human casualties and significant environmental and economic damage.
Countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Algeria, Tunisia, and Canada have been hit hard in recent weeks.
In response to this growing crisis, the European Space Agency (ESA) has updated its World Wildfire Map, providing a detailed analysis of wildfires around the globe.
The outbreak of wildfires is attributed to rising global temperatures and an increase in extreme weather events, leading to the rapid consumption of large areas of vegetation and forested land. European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) reports that more than 234,516 hectares of land across the European Union have burned in this year alone, as of July 29, 2023.
The Global Fire Atlas, reopened by the ESA due to the severity of the wildfires, provides an overview of the distribution of individual fires nationally and globally. Its interactive dashboard allows users to compare the frequency of fires across countries and analyze the evolution of each wildfire over time.
The atlas uses nightly data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite Land and Sea Surface Thermometer (SLSTR) to detect fires. Â
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