Explained: Fires peaked in August, half were in Asia

“Fires in the Amazon sparked a global outcry this summer, but fires have also been blazing in the Arctic, France, Greece, Indonesia as well as many other areas in the world,” the ESA said.

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Smoke from an area of the Amazon forest in Brazil on September 17. (Reuters)

Compared to August 2018, there were almost five times as many wildfires across the world in August 2019, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced citing data from its Sentinel-3 World Fire Atlas. August and September 2019 were also the months during which fires in the Amazon rainforest were at the centre of worldwide attention. A detailed analysis of the August 2019 fires, however, shows that it was Asia that accounted for nearly half of these fires, the ESA said.