Jasper, Lytton, Los Angeles, Fort McMurray — the last few years have been filled with unprecedented fire disasters, taking lives and destroying communities and economies.

Now, scientists have the data to show how these societally destructive wildfires — ones that kill people and cause huge financial losses — are growing all across the world and are becoming much more common because of climate change.

"I think for wildfires in many environments, it's not a question of if a fire is going to happen, it's more about when it's going to happen," said John Abatzoglou, co-author of the study and professor at the University of California Merced.

The sweeping assessment, published on Thursday in the journal Science, relied, in part, on proprietary data usually only available to insurance and

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