Summary/Abstract
Climate change is exacerbating wildfire conditions, but evidence is lacking for global trends in extreme fire activity itself. In this study, the authors identify energetically extreme wildfire events by calculating daily clusters of summed fire radiative power using 21 years of satellite data. This assessment reveals that the frequency of extreme wildfire events (≥99.99th percentile) increased by 2.2-fold from 2003 to 2023, with the last 7 years including the 6 most extreme. Although the total area burned on Earth may be declining, our study highlights that fire behaviour is worsening in several regions—particularly the boreal and temperate conifer biomes—with substantial implications for carbon storage and human exposure to wildfire disasters.