Earlier this month, more than 40 people perished and 20,000 people were ordered to evacuate as Northern California faced some of its deadliest fires in decades. Potentially fueled by climate change, these fires—only the only the latest in a string of fires to strike the state—will reshape landscapes and lives, as I know well from personal experience on the other side of the world.

Nestled in the foothills of the Eastern Ghats in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh is a dry, scrubby valley dotted with fields, farms, and grazing trails, where I went to school. At the beginning of every summer, a spate of small forest fires would break out. After my initial surprise gave way, I quickly grew to view these fires as a normal, if increasingly severe, phenomenon.

While some of these fires were planned to force new grass to grow, each year the number of unplanned fires increased as the area grew drier and hotter. At the same time, local farmers increasingly turned to lucrative, water-intensive crops such as tomatoes, depleting groundwater reserves and hampering the area’s natural capacity to resist fires.

Longer, Hotter, Drier

Across the world, higher temperatures, longer dry spells, and unsustainable resource management support conditions for unpredictable, destructive, and deadly fires. Over the last few years, southern Europe and the western United States have experienced widespread and large-scale fires due to a combination of unusually strong winds, dry weather, and heatwaves. In the short term, fires threaten public safety and personal property, particularly when local authorities have to manage large-scale evacuations while controlling rapidly moving fires. But large fires may also contribute to more pervasive problems by altering the water cycle; a recent NASA study on water resources and fires in the Sahel finds that burning adversely affects soil moisture, evaporation, and vegetation greenness, all of which affect rainfall. In the long term, fires and unsustainable resource management may lead to a vicious cycle of more extreme weather events such as prolonged droughts, which in turn create conditions conducive to burning.

Rising temperatures have altered landscapes in ways that have opened new swathes of territory and vegetation to burning. Earlier melting times for seasonal ice and snow in areas that are not typically fire-prone has spurred a rash of fires across cooler climates, including parts of the northwestern United States, Russia, and Greenland. While vegetation in fire-prone areas is often adapted to cycles of burning and regrowth, these earlier thaws expose different flammable plants, including coniferous trees and peat. Over time, this could change the landscape entirely, as the temporary loss of forest cover and healthy soil can expose land to other weather-related disasters such as flash floods.

Where rising temperatures and changing climatic conditions have encouraged severe fires in areas that previously had sporadic or short fire seasons, fire-prone grasslands have been experiencing a drop in burning as more land has been converted to farmland. The drop in emissions from fewer grassland fires may be roughly equal to the rise in emissions from larger, more frequent fires in new areas. But even if the climate impacts are equal, the changes to both systems have had cascading adverse effects on biodiversity and local ecosystems. For example, the increase in farmland places stress on water systems, which can facilitate drought conditions; subsequent water shortages can cause crop failures and increase vulnerability to future disasters.

A Real Dumpster Fire

The uptick in severe fires in areas that are not typically fire-prone can be attributed to several factors beyond climate change-related heat and drought, including increased fire suppression, accidents, and storms and lightning strikes. Unsustainable land and resource management helps increase the impact and severity of extreme-weather events and disasters, particularly in urban environments with large, concentrated populations in tight proximity. Fighting fires in urban environments is quite different than traditional forest firefighting. The recent Napa fires are arguably more deadly because structures burn longer than trees. We also know less about how to fight large-scale urban fires in which dozens of houses or entire neighborhoods go up in flames.

In developing countries, as increasing numbers of people move into densely populated urban centers such as Colombo, Nassau, and Kolkata, the amount of garbage generated increases considerably, largely without increases or improvements in handling and disposal. The accumulation of garbage in open, densely packed landfills, combined with rising temperatures, fosters the buildup of combustible materials and makes the surrounding areas vulnerable to fire damage. In Bangalore, untreated waste and sewage formed potent chemical soups that ignited and set lakes on fire. In addition to the immediate harm that these disasters cause to property and life, nearby communities face considerable health risks, as the fumes from waste-related fires can cause respiratory issues and reduce life expectancy.

Fighting the Fire Cycle

Rising temperatures associated with climate change clearly increase susceptibility to burning. Local governments in communities facing longer, hotter, drier seasons will need to adapt planting and land management techniques that accommodate their changing ecosystems and vegetation. The need for planning is even more pressing in urban areas, where the environmental and health risks from fires are just one result of the pressures that growing populations exert on developing urban spaces. To avoid the immense damage that fires can do to property, the economy, and to human life, fire suppression is not enough. We need integrated approaches to fire prevention that address all of the drivers, including  long-term water management, biodiversity preservation, urban and land-use planning, and climate mitigation and adaptation.