WASHINGTON: Earth&rsquo;s nastiest and costliest wildfires are blazing four times more often now than they did in the 1980s because of human-caused climate change and people moving closer to wildlands, a new study found.&nbsp;A study in the journal Science examines global wildfires, not by acres burned, which is the most common measuring stick, but by the more challenging-to-calculate economic and human damage they cause. The study concluded there has been a &ldquo;climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires.&rdquo;&nbsp;A team of Australian, American, and German fire scientists calculated the 200 most damaging fires since 1980 based on the percentage of damage to the country&#39;s Gross Domestic Product at the time, taking inflation into account. The frequency of these events has increased about 4.4 times from 1980 to 2023, said study lead author Calum Cunningham, a pyrogeographer at the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania in Australia.&nbsp;&ldquo;It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that we do have a major wildfire crisis on our hands,&rdquo; Cunningham said.&nbsp;About 43% of the 200 most damaging fires occurred in the last 10 years of the study. In the 1980s, the globe averaged two of these catastrophic fires a year, and occasionally hit four a year. From 2014 to 2023, the world averaged nearly nine a year, including 13 in 2021. It noted that the count of these devastating infernos sharply increased in 2015, which &ldquo;coincided with increasingly extreme climatic conditions.&rdquo; Though the study date ended in 2023, the last two years have been even more extreme, Cunningham said.&nbsp;Europe and North America lead in the number of these economically damaging fires. It&#39;s especially worse in the Mediterranean, around Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, as well as in the Western United States, particularly around California, due to the climate&#39;s tendency towards sudden dryness, which is exacerbated by global warming, Cunningham said.&nbsp;The researchers also found a tripling in the frequency of single fires that killed at least 10 people, such as the 2018 Paradise fire, the 2023 Lahaina fire, and those in Los Angeles in 2025.&nbsp;Cunningham said often researchers look at how many acres a fire burns as a measuring stick, but he called that flawed because it really doesn&#39;t show the effect on people, with area not mattering as much as economics and lives. Hawaii&#39;s Lahaina fire wasn&#39;t big, but it burned a lot of buildings and killed a lot of people, so it was more meaningful than one in sparsely populated regions, he said.&nbsp;&ldquo;We need to be targeting the fires that matter. And those are the fires that cause major ecological destruction because they&rsquo;re burning too intensely,&rdquo; Cunningham said.&nbsp;However, economic data is difficult to obtain, as many countries keep this information private, which prevents global trends and totals from being accurately calculated. So, Cunningham and colleagues were able to get more than 40 years of global economic data from the insurance giant Munich Re and then combine it with the public database from the International Disaster Database, which, although not as comprehensive, is collected by the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.&nbsp;The study examined &ldquo;fire weather,&rdquo; characterized by hot, dry, and windy conditions that increase the likelihood and severity of extreme fires, and found that these conditions are on the rise, potentially linking them to the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas.&nbsp;&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve firstly got that connection that all the disasters by and large occurred during extreme weather. We&rsquo;ve also got a strong trend of those conditions becoming more common as a result of climate change. That&rsquo;s indisputable,&rdquo; Cunningham said. &ldquo;So that&rsquo;s a line of evidence there to say that climate change is having a significant effect on at least creating the conditions that are suitable for a major fire disaster.&rdquo;&nbsp;If there were no human-caused climate change, the world would still have devastating fires, but not as many, he said: &ldquo;We&rsquo;re loading the dice in a sense by increasing temperatures.&rdquo;&nbsp;There are other factors. People are moving closer to fire-prone areas, called the wildland-urban interface, Cunningham said. And society is not getting a handle on dead foliage that becomes fuel, he said. But those factors are more complex to quantify compared to climate change, he said.&nbsp;&quot;This is an innovative study in terms of the data sources employed, and it mostly confirms common sense expectations: fires causing major fatalities and economic damage tend to be those in densely populated areas and to occur during the extreme fire weather conditions that are becoming more common due to climate change,&quot; said Jacob Bendix, a geography and environment professor at Syracuse University who studies fires, but wasn&#39;t part of this research team.&nbsp;Not only does the study make sense, but it&#39;s a bad sign for the future, said Mike Flannigan, a fire researcher at Thompson Rivers University in Canada. Flannigan, who wasn&#39;t part of the research, said: &quot;As the frequency and intensity of extreme fire weather and drought increase, the likelihood of disastrous fires increases, so we need to do more to be better prepared.&quot;

Natural Disaster

Earth’s nastiest and costliest wildfires are blazing four times more often now than they did in the 1980s because of human-caused climate change and people moving closer to wildlands

World faces far more damaging fires than 1980s

WASHINGTON : An experimental medication made from marijuana successfully reduced back pain in a new study, offering further support for the drug&rsquo;s potential in treating one of the most common forms of chronic pain.&nbsp;The 800-patient study by a German drugmaker is the latest evidence of the therapeutic properties of cannabis, which remains illegal under U.S. federal law even as most states have made it available for medical or recreational use.&nbsp;Health officials in Canada and Europe have previously approved a pharmaceutical-grade form of cannabis for several types of pain, including nerve pain due to multiple sclerosis. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug containing CBD &mdash; one of the many non-intoxicating chemicals found in cannabis &mdash; to treat rare seizures in children with epilepsy.&nbsp;Unlike that drug, known as Epidiolex, the new cannabis formula from drugmaker Vertanical contains THC, the active ingredient in marijuana that gets users high. But levels of the chemical are very low, essentially a microdose compared to what&rsquo;s available in gummies, chocolate bars and other products sold at marijuana dispensaries in the U.S. The company said patients in the trial didn&rsquo;t show any signs of drug abuse, dependence or withdrawal.&nbsp;Vertanical is seeking approval for a large group of patients: those suffering from lower-back pain, a chronic condition that affects millions and has few proven treatments.&nbsp;Over-the-counter pain relievers like ibuprofen can&rsquo;t be used for long-term pain because of their side effects, which include stomach ulcers and indigestion. Opioids are no longer recommended, after the overprescribing of painkillers such as OxyContin in the 1990s and 2000s led to the ongoing epidemic of addiction to that class of drug.&nbsp;Chronic pain is one of the most frequently cited conditions of people enrolled in state-run medical marijuana programs. But there&#39;s been little rigorous research on the drug&#39;s use in that group.&nbsp;Lead study author Dr. Matthias Karst said in an email that the new findings show cannabis &quot;can significantly reduce pain and improve physical function in patients with chronic low-back pain, without the safety concerns commonly associated with opioids.&rdquo; Karst is a pain specialist at Hannover Medical School and a consultant for Vertanical.&nbsp;For the new study, patients with back pain were randomly assigned to take Vertanical&rsquo;s proprietary liquid cannabis extract or a placebo.&nbsp;At the end of 12 weeks, patients taking the medication reported a nearly 2-point reduction in pain on an 11-point scale, compared with 1.4 points for those taking placebo. The difference was statistically significant. Those getting the drug also reported improvements in sleep and physical function.&nbsp;Patients who continued with a six-month extension phase continued to experience reductions in pain. The results were published Monday in the journal Nature.&nbsp;Side effects included dizziness, headache, fatigue and nausea and led to more than 17% of people discontinuing the drug early. Researchers said that dropout rate was lower than what&#39;s typically reported with opioids, which can cause constipation, nausea, drowsiness and carry risks of addiction.&nbsp;Vertanical has filed an application for its drug with European regulators. In the U.S., the company says it is &ldquo;working closely&rdquo; with regulators to design a study to support FDA approval.

Food

An experimental medication made from marijuana successfully reduced back pain in a new study

Articles tagged with "study"

World faces far more damaging fires than 1980s

A drug made from marijuana reduced back pain in a large study