UN meteorological agency: Wildfires, heat waves likely to degrade air quality

Climate change is making it more difficult to reach international air quality objectives, the U.N. weather office said Monday, warning pollution from increasingly severe wildfires and heat waves could undermine worldwide efforts to improve air quality and protect human health.

Air pollution and climate change are intimately related and should be dealt through integrated policies rather than in isolation, the World Meteorological Organization stated in its annual report on air quality and the climate. “That means extreme wildfires will be more likely to occur in the future, making it harder to meet World Health Organization air quality guidelines,” the warning said.

Wildfires are increasingly adding to dangerous air pollution even as restrictions have cut emissions from industry and transport in many industrialized nations, the WMO said in its report.No matter how clean your city, your region is … if you have a lot of pollution brought ​about by wildfires, that has the potential to significantly effect air quality in those locations as ​well,” Lorenzo Labrador, scientific officer at the WMO, told Reuters.

The research points to the growing influence of tiny particulate matter, called PM2.5, and ground-level ozone, pollutants associated with respiratory and cardiovascular disease. It also called for more monitoring of pollutants and aerosols, such as black carbon and microplastics, which it noted are still poorly tracked despite their widespread presence in the atmosphere.

Extreme heat and deadly wildfires have affected portions of Europe, including Spain, France and Greece this year. The WMO has warned that as the earth warms up, extreme heat is becoming more frequent, intense and longer-lasting.

PM2.5 concentrations in 2025 were above long-term norms in northern Canada, portions of Russia and western-central Africa due to increased fire activity while northwestern Spain was a hot spot following unusual late-summer fires, the latest analysis stated.

A research mentioned in the paper revealed intense fire-smoke occurrences had tripled globally during the 1990s and may have caused ​to roughly 100,000 extra deaths a year between 2010 and 2018.

What makes particulate matter from wildfires particularly dangerous is that it carries a slew of toxic chemicals with it, Labrador said, and inhaling it promotes ​body-wide inflammation that can lead to pulmonary disease.