The Met Office is determined to convince us of the immediate need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. As part of its campaign it is now reporting that the California wildfires in January were caused by severe heatwaves, droughts and, er, heavy rain.
Yes, really.
PAUL HOMEWOOD says the Met Office is no longer a serious scientific organisation but has become a political pressure group.
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Met Office press release, October 16, 2025
‘The latest State of Wildfires report is building unequivocal evidence of how climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme wildfires.
‘Human-driven climate change made wildfires in parts of South America and Southern California many times larger and more destructive, according to an annual assessment by international experts.
‘According to climate models, the Los Angeles wildfires in January were twice as likely and 25 times larger, in terms of burned area, in the current climate than they would have been in a world with no human-caused global warming. It also made last year’s burning in the Pantanal-Chiquitano region in South America 35 times larger, while also driving record-breaking fires in the Amazon and Congo.
‘However, it is still too early to tell how much climate change contributed to the impacts of the wildfires.
‘The new report warns that more severe heatwaves and droughts are making extreme wildfires more frequent and intense worldwide, resulting in increasing threats to people’s lives – through fire and polluting smoke – as well as property, economies and the environment.
‘Key findings from this year’s report include:
- Warming increased burning in Pantanal, Chiquitano and Amazon, releasing billions of tonnes of CO2
- Climate change increased likelihood of Southern California’s deadly fires by at least 2-3 times
- Experts urge nations to significantly cut emissions at COP30 and adapt to a hotter, more fire-prone world
‘Dr Douglas Kelley of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who co-led this year’s report, said: ‘Our annual reports are building unequivocal evidence of how climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme wildfires. Without human-driven warming, many of these wildfires, in Pantanal and Southern California, for example, would not have been on an extreme scale.’
‘Report co-lead Dr Matt Jones of the University of East Anglia said: “We urge world leaders at COP30 to make bold commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions rapidly this decade. This is the single most powerful contribution that most developed nations can make to avoiding the worst impacts of extreme wildfires on living and future generations”.’
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Note the highly political call for rapid cuts in GHGs. It is not the job of the Met Office to canvass for political action.
The report, in any event, is full of contradictions and provides no data to back up their claims that wildfires are more frequent and intense, never mind that climate change has caused anything.
Astonishingly, there appear to be no charts at all which track annual global fire activity since records started. The reason is obvious – facts would destroy the Met Office’s agenda.
The only ‘evidence’ offered is from weather attribution computer models, which have been thoroughly debunked by serious scientists and can be programmed to come up with whatever results you want. If the changes were as drastic as the Met Office pretend, surely there would be ample data to quantify it, instead of relying on make-believe models?
On the contrary, the opposite seems to be the case – the evidence we have shows there is no upward trend. Indeed the report itself admits that last year’s fire season was below average and was the 8th lowest since 2002!
Take the US, for instance, which has been highlighted in the report for the California fires. Some years are up, others are down, but there is no underlying trend whatsoever:
https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires
Of course, if we go back further in time, wildfires used to be much worse. In those days, they were more or less allowed to burn themselves out, which in turn got rid of all the dead wood and undergrowth which acts as fuel to make forest fires more intense.
Then systematic fire suppression began, which drastically curtailed the size of fires, but also allowed the accumulation of that very same dead wood and undergrowth.
Laughably, the report even blames the California fires on wet weather, which the BBC also tried to do at the time:
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/5377/2025
Swain referred to heavy rain during the two winters prior to 2024/25, which I have marked on the rainfall graph below for the Los Angeles Division:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/divisional/time-series/0406/pcp/6/3/1895-2025
Clearly those two years were not unusual at all. California’s climate regularly swings from one extreme to the other.
Equally 2024/25 was not unusually dry either, ranking only the 13th driest since 1895.
Whatever caused the Palisades fire, it was not excessive rain or drought.
Then there’s Europe:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/02/23/eu-wildfire-trends-2024/
A declining trend.
Overall, the Met Office study dishonestly cherry-picks the regions where fire activity was above normal last year, blames it on climate change, and ignores all the other places where it was below average.
And then proceeds to claim: ‘The latest State of Wildfire report is building unequivocal evidence of how climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme wildfires.’
And they call it science!
