Georgia blaze shows how climate change has led to more wildfires in the East

Often considered more a problem for Western North America, wildfires are becoming more intense, frequent and damaging in the East, such as this week's blaze that destroyed more than 50 homes in Georgia, fire scientists said.

Researchers blame a number of factors including climate change causing fuel to dry out and be more flammable, a record drought, tens of millions of tons of dead trees from Hurricane Helene and just the large area where dense forests and high numbers of people try to coexist.

So far this year, 2,802 square miles (7,258 square kilometers) of the United States has burned in wildfires — much of it in Nebraska, an unusual area for massive wildfires — that's 88% more than the 10-year average for this time of year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That's happening as significant chunks of the country set records for the warmest winter and March and April drought.

“The warmer we get, the more fire we see. Longer fire seasons, more lightning possibly, and drier fuels,” said fire scientist Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, Canada. “I think we're going to see more fire in the East. We're seeing more intense fires.”

The number of large fires, likelihood of them happening and amount of land burned has increased in most of the Southeast United States from 1984 to 2020, according to a 2023 study by University of Florida fire ecologists Victoria Donovan and Carissa Wonkka.

“The fires in the East historically and today are a lot smaller than in the Western United States, so they might not always grab as much attention as those out West. But we’re starting to see now this shift in dynamics in the East, we’re starting to quantify it,” Donovan said Thursday. “Even though the changes that we're seeing in the East are much smaller than we're quantifying out West, we think it's extremely important to start to get ahead of this problem now.”

Three months ago, Donovan, Wonkka and other fire scientists created a new network for fire researchers to study Eastern fires because some of the issues that experts have learned out West may not apply in the East, Wonkka said.

Even though the West has bigger and more noticeable fast-spreading fires, the East has more people in the way of flames in something scientists call the wildland-urban interface or WUI.

“We found that 45% of all large wildfires in the East burn some portion of the wildland-urban interface and 55% of the area burned so that a lot of these large wildfires are associated with WUI fires,” Donovan said.

Add to that the forests in the East are denser and less likely to be thinned out than those in the West, Donovan said.

A week ago, federal and state official looked at the drought, the weather and the millions of dead trees from Hurricane Helene in 2024 and issued an advisory to watch out for fires, said Nick Nauslar, a National Weather Service fire science and operations officer at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

“They are thinking, you know, they could see more fires, more resistance to control with the fires that they get,” Nauslar said. “It has been warmer and drier than normal across many of the areas where Helene caused damage. So there’s the potential there. You have an excess of fuel available because now (the trees are) dead and at the mercy of weather and climate. And then if you get dry and windy conditions, if you get an ignition, it’s more likely to ignite and spread.”

In Georgia alone, 13,954 square miles (36,142 square kilometers) of forest land was hit by Hurricane Helene, downing more than 26 million tons of pine and 30 million tons of hardwood, according a November 2024 University of Georgia and Georgia Forestry Commission timber damage assessment.

“Many of us have worried about fuel buildup post-Helene. It’s a ticking time bomb,” University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd said.

But it's not just downed trees — it's also dry air increasing the likelihood of fires. It's not just a lack of rain, but the air itself is less humid, which causes problem, Nauslar and Flannigan said.

“As we warm … the atmosphere’s ability to suck moisture out of dead fuel, not live fuel, but dead fuel, increases almost exponentially as temperature increases,” Flannigan said. “The drier the fuel, the easier it is for a fire to start, means more fuel dried and is available to burn, which leads to higher intensity fires that are difficult to impossible to extinguish.

“That's what we're seeing now starting to make inroads into the East,” Flannigan said. Human-caused climate change is clearly playing a role, he said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

A firefighter works the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A fire burns as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A burned vehicle sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A helicopter carries water to the Brantley Highway 82 fire, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A burned trailer sits near a destroyed home as the Brantley Highway 82 fire burns, Thursday, April 23, 2026, near Nahunta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Against a backdrop of rising global tensions and energy market instability, governments from around 50 countries will gather Friday in Colombia’s Caribbean city of Santa Marta for a summit aimed at accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels.

The April 24–29 conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, will bring together ministers, subnational governments, academics and civil society groups to discuss how to move beyond oil, gas and coal while ensuring the transition is “just, orderly and equitable,” organizers said.

The meeting reflects growing frustration among some governments and advocates that decades of U.N. climate negotiations have failed to directly address fossil fuel production — the main driver of global warming — prompting the Santa Marta summit to push the issue outside formal talks.

Organizers say the gathering is intended to open space for a politically sensitive debate that has long been avoided in international climate negotiations.

“It is definitely a political space. We are opening a space for discussion that does not exist,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the summit.

Unlike formal U.N. climate negotiations, the meeting is not expected to produce binding commitments. Instead, officials say the goal is to generate a set of proposals and build coalitions of countries willing to move faster on phasing out fossil fuels.

“We’ve also seen climate action unfortunately fall down the list of government priorities,” said Claudio Angelo, head of international policy at the Observatorio do Clima think tank in Brazil.

Nations from Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, many of which play key roles in fossil fuel production or consumption, will attend. The United States and Saudi Arabia — two of the world’s largest oil producers — will not, underscoring divisions between countries pushing for a faster transition and those more closely tied to fossil fuel interests.

Under the Paris Agreement — the 2015 global climate accord — countries set their own emissions targets, meaning no international process can compel governments to phase out fossil fuels.

The summit is part of a broader push to move climate diplomacy beyond emissions targets and toward directly confronting fossil fuel production — a politically sensitive issue that has long divided countries.

Some advocates say new approaches are needed to close what they see as a major gap in global climate policy.

“Fossil-free zones turn global climate goals into concrete geographic decisions,” said Andrés Gómez of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, referring to proposals to designate areas where oil, gas and coal extraction would be off-limits, particularly in ecologically sensitive regions.

Indigenous leaders involved in the process say they are pushing governments attending the Santa Marta summit to adopt fossil-free zones as part of their transition plans.

“For Indigenous peoples, stopping fossil fuel extraction is not only a climate imperative — it is essential to defending our territories, our governance systems and our right to self-determination,” said Juan Carlos Jintiach, executive secretary of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, a coalition of Indigenous and local community organizations representing millions of people across forest regions worldwide.

He added that governments must move “from commitments to implementation” by integrating fossil-free zones into national energy transition plans.

Analysis by advocacy groups shows that oil and gas concessions already overlap with vast areas of tropical forest and Indigenous territories, underscoring the scale of the challenge.

The conference comes at a time of heightened geopolitical uncertainty, including the war in Iran, which has disrupted global energy markets and threatened supply through the Strait of Hormuz — a critical route for roughly a fifth of the world’s oil.

The resulting price spikes are already being felt far beyond energy markets.

“Oil prices don’t just stay in energy markets — they move straight into people’s lives,” said Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and a leading climate justice advocate expected to attend the Santa Marta conference, speaking at a press conference ahead of the event.

“Impacts are hitting the most vulnerable hardest, as always, while oil companies reap windfall profits,” she said.

In her interview, Vélez said such instability should accelerate — rather than delay — the transition.

“The crisis — and let’s call it what it is — the war in the Middle East has triggered a global crisis,” she said. “In this case, I believe the movement should be toward radicalizing the green agenda and the transitions.”

Some analysts warn that supply shocks could push countries to increase fossil fuel production in the short term, even as they commit to long-term climate goals — highlighting the tension between energy security and climate action.

That tension is particularly visible in Latin America, where many economies rely heavily on oil, gas and mining exports even as governments position themselves as climate leaders. Colombia, one of the region’s top oil producers and home to roughly 6% of the Amazon rainforest, depends on crude exports for a significant share of government revenue and foreign income.

At the same time, Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government has pledged to halt new oil exploration and push for a global phaseout of fossil fuels.

“Economic and fiscal dependence is a problem, and it is perhaps the main challenge we face,” Vélez said.

Financial constraints are also expected to shape discussions. Many developing countries face high levels of public debt and limited fiscal space, making it difficult to invest in renewable energy and other elements of the transition.

Civil society groups say that without reforms to the global financial system, these constraints will continue to slow progress.

“Moving away from fossil fuels requires, without a doubt, a careful economic and energy transition plan,” said Carola Mejía of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Economic, Social and Climate Justice.

Gabriella Bianchini of Global Witness said the stakes go beyond climate alone.

“As people everywhere suffer the consequences of oil-driven conflict, it’s never been clearer that the world needs to leave the fossil fuel era behind,” she said. “Santa Marta is a chance for governments and communities to grab the bull by the horns and take action toward a greener, more equitable and peaceful world.”

She added that while U.N. climate talks remain crucial, they have repeatedly struggled to deliver meaningful progress on fossil fuels.

“Santa Marta represents space for governments to work on the one plan we know will stave off the worst impacts of climate breakdown: a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels,” Bianchini said.

Observers say a key question will be whether the meeting can produce a clearer political signal on an issue that has remained largely unresolved in global climate talks.

“If we think about it, the conference is that turning point where, collectively, we decide to be on the right side of history,” environment minister Vélez said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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