Extreme heat records have been broken around the world this year, and scientists say 2024 is likely to be the hottest year in human history. With the climate crisis causing droughts and wildfires and having devastating effects on crops and animals, the Guardian has spoken to people living in some of the places that have been hit the hardest
Mike Noel, United States
A regional fire operations risk management officer with the US Forest Service, Noel has been part of the forces fighting wildfires in California, which have burned more than 323,750 hectares (800,000 acres) across the state so far this year.
The biggest changes I have seen are the overall size and complexity of the fires. From a fire behaviour perspective, from a rate of spread – multiple thousands of acres burning in one burn period – I can definitely say that’s something I hadn’t seen in my career previously.
I have been on large fires – Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona, Yellowstone in ‘88 was over a million acres – but specifically in ‘20, ‘21, ‘22 there were huge fires and that’s definitely new.
The complexity, with increasing urban growth, continues to grow at a rapid pace. It adds additional complexity when you have communities, and infrastructure and the public that close to wildfires.
We have a lot of people, a lot of equipment, but some of these fires, under the right conditions – weather, fuels, these places haven’t burned for 100 years – when those conditions are lined up, mother nature is outpacing us. We are working our tails off trying to put it out but there are some days you just can’t keep up with it.
In California things were fairly quiet, then you get days that are 100F to 120F temperatures and the fuels rapidly dried out. Fuels aren’t used to being baked for 10 days under 120F temperatures, with recoveries at night not getting out of the 80s. So here we are.
Wildland firefighting on a good weather day is already arduous. Folks are covered head to toe in PPE with 40-plus-pound packs on, so fighting fires when it is 90F to 115F is a lot of added physical stress on the body. Physically, the act of firefighting is more difficult and the fuels are a lot more resistant to being put out.
If you are exposed to temperatures over the long duration you are going to have heat-related illness. Humans aren’t designed to operate for a long time at extreme temperatures doing extremely physical work.
As told to Gabrielle Canon
Yanipak Arunsinprasreat, Thailand
Arunsinprasreat is a durian farmer in Korat, north-east Thailand. Record-breaking heat this year has killed dozens of people across the country and damaged crops.
The perfect temperature for durian would be 35C. Durian can stand the heat, but this year it was so stuffy – it was around 40C. It felt like the inside of an oven, with no wind at all.
In a normal year I water the durian trees for one hour per day, but this year I watered for two to two-and-a-half hours per day. It didn’t help.
Suddenly, the fruit started falling and cracking. At times, between 100 and 200 durians would fall on the ground in one day. This has never happened before. Our mango and guava were affected as well.
I expected to get around 200,000-300,000 baht (£4,430-£6,640) if all 100 trees gave a good yield. Right now, I think I will get only 20,000 baht. I’m in debt because of the cost of fertiliser.
We couldn’t do anything with the fallen durian. We just dumped it because the durian itself was so plain – there was no flavour at all – you can’t process it into chips or candy.
The durian here is special; the crust is thin and the smell is not too strong, it’s sweet and very delicious. But now with climate change the taste has changed; it’s less sweet and more bland. Usually, before, we could sell for 180-200 baht per kilo for good durian but now it’s down to 100-120 per kilo.
[I can adapt so the fruit] is harvested before the hottest months. But not every farmer can do the same thing; it depends on the area. I think production will decrease and durian will get more expensive. It’s becoming more difficult to be a farmer [because the weather is unpredictable]. Some farmers are going bankrupt.
As told to Rebecca Ratcliffe
Alexia Papagiannakos Anni, Greece
Papagiannakos Anni works at Vrouva Farm Animal Sanctuary in Greece, which has experienced unusually high temperatures all summer.
The high temperatures started at the beginning of June and they’ve been going on continuously. That’s exhausting for everybody, but we had an elderly German Shepherd with weak kidneys, Max, who died at the end of June. The added stress of continuous heat to his system was too much. An elderly horse had a stroke but he survived, surprisingly, and we hope he will make a recovery. But again, it was triggered by the heat. Rabbits are particularly sensitive, so in temperatures over 39C we take them to somebody’s house. The same goes for the chicks, they can’t tolerate the heat.
The hardest thing for us is seeing them suffer. You can’t do much and it’s very frustrating. We can wet the soil and animals a bit, but the water from the municipality is not enough for the tourist season, and so we have to buy more. The animals sit and they pant and they have no appetite to eat. They’re sad. The dogs and the cats pant. The cats, they have their mouths open and their tongues out, they’re literally panting and there’s nothing you can do. It’s completely heartbreaking.
But it’s not just pets and farm animals – it’s also insects and creatures in the soil. Our fate is interwoven with theirs and we have to start noticing. It’s easy with the animals near you, but by doing so, it’s like a window that opens into the whole of creation. After having seen our dogs and cats pant, our volunteers have gone into the forest and put out buckets of water for wild animals.
As told to Ajit Niranjan
Gustavo Figueroa, Brazil
Figueroa is a biologist who serves as the conservation director for SOS Pantanal. Wildfires in the Pantanal area of Brazil, which is the world’s biggest wetlands, have burned more than 405,000 hectares this year.
I’m a biologist who became a part-time firefighter because my region – the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil – has suffered so many terrible blazes in the past four years that I couldn’t bear to just stand by and watch the destruction.
Ever since I was a kid in the city of São Paulo, I wanted to work with nature. Once I saw the incredible variety of life in the Pantanal, that was it; I never wanted to leave. It is a privilege to work here, but the record fires since 2020 have threatened everything.
That first year I remember seeing the charred body of an alligator in a dried out river bed. That was horrifying enough, but then a family of coati came to the scene looking for water where there was none. The animals that weren’t burned were dying of drought – in a wetland of all places.
The following year, there was another big fire that I helped to fight. At one point, I came across an almost dry lake full of serpents trying to seek refuge from the heat, smoke and flames. Many were already dead, but I was able to rescue an anaconda. That was an amazing feeling for me because my specialty is snakes.
Experiences like this have left a mark. Firefighting is exhausting. I’ve been sickened by smoke inhalation and suffered skin problems. Worse still is the psychological impact of seeing a place that I love in flames and so many wonderful creatures burned to death.
This year it happened again. But we must learn from this. Civil society must build stronger structures to fight fire. We need to campaign the government to do more. And we need to raise public awareness of what is happening.
As told to Jonathan Watts
• Entries have been edited for clarity.
