As fires rage across the Amazon - dubbed the "lungs of the planet" given it produces 20 per cent of the oxygen in the atmosphere - and while forests are ablaze in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, southern Europe and parts of Australia, climate scientists might be justified in saying: "We told you so."

They tend not to gloat, however, about the tragedy that confronts us all.

Brazil alone has had 72,843 fires this year. The pace of global warming is exceeding projections, astounding climate scientists. Within the past 70 years or so major shifts in climate zones and an accelerating spate of extreme weather events — cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves and fires — are ravaging large tracts of Earth.

Scientists Jos Barlow and Alexander C. Lees write in The Conversation that "climate change itself is making dry seasons longer and forests more flammable. Increased temperatures are also resulting in more frequent tropical forest fires in non-drought years. And climate change may also be driving the increasing frequency and intensity of climate anomalies, such as El Niño events that affect fire season intensity across Amazonia."