May 9, 2025, by Brigitte Nerlich
Wildfires in the UK: How do we talk about them?
On 1 May 2025, a member of the UK Meteorological Office noted on Bluesky that: “With the temperature at Kew Gardens reaching 28.0°C and still climbing, it is now officially the warmest start to May on record for the UK.” At the same time, the Metro newspaper reported that “UK records hottest start to May on record while country battles with wildfires.”
I sat in the garden, which was very pleasant, though the subsequent watering of plants was less so. While I was doing this chore, I thought about the lovely weather we were experiencing since the beginning of March. We have had, it appears, the driest and sunniest March across England since 1961. Then my thoughts turned to the wildfires that have affected various parts of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, particularly during April. On 27 April, the BBC reported that “The area of the UK burnt by wildfires so far this year is already higher than the total for any year in more than a decade, satellite data suggests.”
Since 2012, I have written about wildfires and bushfires on this blog as they occurred in New Mexico, California, Australia and Canada. However, I have never addressed wildfires in the UK specifically. Of course, grassfires, heath fires, shrub fires, peat fires and even forest fires have always happened here to some extent, but they have rarely featured in national and local news with the persistence we see today; with the exception perhaps of the Wennington wildfire during the extreme heatwave of 2022, which destroyed several London houses.
It appears that climate change continues its progression, and extreme weather events in the UK are diversifying, from floods and droughts to heatwaves and wildfires. It is worth noting that the London fire brigade now operates what they call ‘extreme weather response vehicles’ – a phrase that would have seemed quite alien just a decade ago.
The increasing presence of UK wildfires in public discourse
As one bewildered individual remarked on Bluesky at the beginning of April: “Wildfires, eh? Gosh it’s terrible for – where is it this time? Greece? Spain? Wait but wut? Dorset?” Another commented toward the end of April: “Wildfires in UK? In April? It shouldn’t even happen.”
I began to wonder how these wildfires were reported in UK local and national news. Using the news data
base Nexis (accessed on 1 May), I searched for articles containing both “wildfire” and “UK” in newspapers generally. The results suggest that reporting on such topics has increased quite dramatically over time between 1982 and 2025 (see graph), corresponding with the increased frequency of wildfires. The Independent featured the most articles (2764), followed by various other broadsheets, with significant coverage also appearing in regional and local newspapers.
To manage the volume of material, I asked Nexis to sort the thousands of articles by relevance and downloaded the first one hundred for analysis. Nearly all were published in April 2025, with few exceptions. I then conducted what one might call a rapid thematic analysis of these articles (that is, I skimmed them).
Themes in UK wildfire coverage
Risk assessment and record-breaking events
There was considerable discussion of risk, particularly ‘extreme risk’; of ‘records’ being broken (temperature; area burnt, etc.); and of ‘warnings’, especially ‘amber’ warnings. There was also some examination of measures to reduce risk and debates around practices such as ‘muirburning‘ in Scotland and land management more generally.
One headline news item from the BBC was frequently repeated across various outlets: “The area of the UK burnt by wildfires so far this year is already higher than the total for any year in more than a decade, satellite data suggests.” The Independent published a headline on 15 April stating: “UK may be on track to see worst year for wildfires, figures show.” Several headlines contained the phrases ‘extreme risk’ or ‘extreme fire risk’, and numerous others included the word ‘warning’. The Express Online (8 April) even employed the phrase ‘urgent extreme warning’ in relation to wildfires in Scotland.
Geographical distribution and environmental impact
The articles reviewed provided insight into the diverse regions affected by “devastating” wildfires in March and April, from Scotland and Northern Ireland to Wales and England, and from Cumbria and Lancashire to Dorset and Dartmoor. Reports also documented the environmental and ecological consequences of these fires. The Daily Star Online, for instance, published an article headlined “UK’s rarest wildlife being ‘torched alive’ and pushed to brink of extinction by wildfires” (17 April).
On 28 April The Times reported on a fire that had broken out on the Isle of Arran in Scotland on 10 April and noted that: “About 27,000 trees — including whitebeams — were destroyed when a blaze ripped through Glen Rosa, a conservation area, before Easter. Scientists also believe hundreds of reptiles and amphibians — adders, slow worms and frogs — died.” (Photo of Arran fire by Sally Zacharias, taken from Arran and looking towards Ardlamont/Bute)
Contributing factors and climate change
The articles discussed various causes of the wildfires, similar to discussions I had observed earlier this year regarding wildfires in California, which were attributed to a combination of wind, accumulated undergrowth/fuel load, and exceptionally dry conditions, sometimes referred to as ‘tinderbox conditions.’
Climate change was addressed to some extent, though perhaps not as extensively as warranted. During my analysis, climate journalist Dave Vetter noted on Bluesky: “It’s been the UK’s hottest May 1 ever recorded, and not a single mention of climate change in this BBC coverage. Also nothing about climate change in the BBC Radio 4 bulletin tonight on the same subject.” Nevertheless, some news items did engage with the climate change dimension.
On 13 April, the Cambrian News quoted Sam Ward, Head of Climate Cymru, who stated: “This fire is a symptom of a world that’s heating far too fast… People are right to be concerned. We’re seeing not just bad luck or a one-off anomaly – it’s climate change. Rising temperatures, prolonged dry spells, and shifting weather patterns are turning our landscapes into tinderboxes. The climate crisis is here, and it’s burning across our hills.” Ward added that “Wales is on the frontline of the climate emergency”.
Similarly, on 11 April, the Daily Record reported that “scientists and fire brigade union chiefs said Scotland must learn lessons from warm, wildfire-prone countries as climate change intensifies.”
Language and framing
Metaphorical language
Metaphors were relatively uncommon in the coverage examined. While there were occasional references to ‘battling wildfires,’ they were not prevalent. Some journalists and activists did however employ metaphors when discussing wildfires in the context of climate change, describing them as ‘warning signs’, ‘wake-up calls’, and, somewhat paradoxically, ‘the tip of the iceberg’ (Cambrian News, 13 April).
Metaphors typically function to make unfamiliar concepts more accessible. So far, wildfires themselves have been relatively familiar but rare phenomena in the UK context, which may explain the limited use of metaphorical language—at least for now. This differs markedly from the situation in California, for example, where familiar wildfires have evolved in ways that require metaphorical explanation and expression.
Comparative framing
Metaphors represent one aspect of making sense of new realities. Another approach involves direct comparison of new unsettling phenomena with older, well-understood ones which helps people to process a changing reality – of anchoring the new in the old.
In this context, one might distinguish between comparisons used to inform and educate, and comparisons used to alarm or sensationalise.
The former is exemplified by comparing recent UK wildfires to those that occurred in California in January: “Scientists and fire brigade union chiefs said Scotland must learn lessons from warm, wildfire-prone countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece as climate change intensifies” (The Daily Record, 11 April). Similarly, the Farmers Guardian (9 April) quoted Andrew Gilruth, chief executive of The Moorland Association: “The Los Angeles disaster showed that today’s accumulating vegetation is tomorrow’s wildfire. The greater the fuel load, the worse the inevitable conflagration.”
The latter type of comparison occurs through phrases such as “warmer than”, “hotter than”, “higher temperature than”, typically followed by references to Barcelona, Ibiza, Athens, or more generally “European holiday hotspots” (The Guardian, 4 April). The Daily Record, for example, reported on 4 April: “According to the Met Office, the UK is currently warmer than typical spring hotspots such as Marbella and Ibiza in Spain, Mykonos in Greece, and even Los Angeles, California.”
In this context, some articles were flagged up on Bluesky as still using the wrong visual images to illustrate wildfire weather, that is, images that still boasted of sunbathing opportunities – a topic that my colleague Saffron O’Neill has explored in the past with relation to heatwaves.
Reflections on a changing climate reality
Metaphors seem to be relatively rare in UK wildfire coverage. This suggests these events still occupy an ambiguous position in British consciousness. They are not entirely foreign, yet not fully integrated into people’s understanding of what it means to live in a climate-changed Britain.
Perhaps this is why the conclusion to this analysis feels elusive. Perhaps we are witnessing a transformation of the British landscape and the British experience of weather that is happening faster than our collective ability to make sense of it.
Wildfires are not just burning heather and gorse. They are burning through our assumptions about what it means to live in the UK, what seasons should feel like, what dangers we should prepare for.
As some commentators have pointed out, the fires of spring 2025 aren’t an anomaly; they are a warning. As we water our gardens in record-breaking sunshine, enjoying nice weather has acquired a darker undertone and the line between British weather and the climate extremes of Southern Europe or California is growing increasingly blurred.
This can be seen as alarmism, but I think is, in fact, a recognition that British weather is changing faster than British weather discourse. But as we develop new ways to talk about these changes, we might also develop new ways to address them—from land management reforms to climate policy.
The question is not whether British wildfires will continue. It is whether we can find the right words, images and actions to respond to them.
Image: By Berik – Sugarloaf Fire, CC0: Burnt land on the Sugar Loaf. [There are more dramatic pictures but none are freely available]
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