Western US burned acres have tripled in 40 years; fire season has lengthened by 75 days.
A free, animated wildfire frequency and severity you can read here or embed on any website, from Scrollchart.
Wildfire Frequency and Severity
Annual burned acres in the western US from 1980 to 2023 on the left axis, with fire-season length (days) on the right axis. The 2020 record of 8.9 million acres is annotated. A side panel quantifies the vapor-pressure-deficit mechanism: each 1 C of warming adds approximately 12% to burned area.
Good for
Climate-risk explainers covering western US fire risk and insurance implications
Policy briefings on wildland-urban interface management and prescribed burn programs
Environmental journalism illustrating the link between warming temperatures and fire-season expansion
Source & accuracy
This wildfire frequency and severity is an editorial illustration built to represent the concept accurately. Where it shows figures, they are typical or representative values chosen to make the relationship clear, not a single underlying dataset. The diagram and its explainer are reviewed and maintained centrally, and updated over time as understanding improves.
Extended burning season compounds area burned
Spring snowmelt timing has shifted earlier by 1-2 weeks across the western US over the past 40 years, leaving forests drier for longer. A hotter atmosphere also pulls moisture from live vegetation, lowering ignition thresholds and accelerating fire spread once started. The net effect compounds: not only are there more days per year when conditions support fire, but those fires move faster and resist suppression more fiercely.
Regional variation masks the continental trend
Wildfire activity is episodic rather than smooth. A single large fire complex in a dry year can double the annual acreage for an entire state. The tripling of burned acres is a 40-year aggregate, but within that span were decades of relative calm and sudden volatility. Projections beyond 2050 show even sharper acceleration if precipitation patterns continue to diverge from the 20th-century baseline.
Embed this diagram
Add this animated wildfire frequency and severity to your own site. Copy one line of HTML, or use the embed builder for theme and sizing options.
Reference
What this is
A free, embeddable, animated wildfire frequency and severity for any website.
Who uses it
Climate & energy writers.
How to embed
Copy one line of HTML. No signup. No watermark. Works in WordPress, Webflow, Ghost, Substack, plain HTML.
File size
iframe embed, ~80 KB gzipped (loads on demand, does not block your page paint).
License
Free forever. Editorial explainer text included; updated centrally over time.
Copy the universal HTML snippet, the WordPress shortcode, or an iframe fallback -
see the WordPress plugin page for details. Any format keeps
the same Core Web Vitals profile and the same explainer text.
By embedding, you acknowledge the diagram and explainer text are served from scrollchart.com and may be updated from time to time to reflect new research or to link to relevant sources within the explainer.
Frequently asked questions
Where can I get a free animated "Wildfire Frequency and Severity" for my website?
Scrollchart provides "Wildfire Frequency and Severity" as a free, embeddable animated diagram you can add to any website with one line of HTML. No signup is required and there is no watermark. The diagram and its explainer text are served from scrollchart.com, so the embed stays current without any maintenance on your end.
How do I embed a wildfire frequency and severity in WordPress or a static site?
Paste the HTML snippet from the Scrollchart diagram page into your WordPress post (in HTML/code view), your Webflow embed block, or directly into a static HTML file. No plugin is needed. The diagram loads from scrollchart.com and paints in as the reader scrolls.