Chilean Wildfires 2016 - 2017
Years of drought and extreme heat are helping fuel the worst fire disaster in Chile's history. The fires began in November 2016 and picked up in late January 2017 amid extreme temperatures that shattered Chile's all time temperature record by an almost unheard of margin of 6.1°F. As of January 31, the fires had affected an area of 547,190 hectares (1.35 million acres). Multiple studies have linked the underlying "mega-drought" in Chile to climate change, attributing increased greenhouse gas emissions to recent declines in precipitation. Regarding the extreme heat in Chile, one of the strongest findings of climate science is that global warming is dramatically amplifying the intensity, duration and frequency of extreme heat events.