The importance degree of weather elements in driving wildfire occurrence in mainland China

•Specify the fire occurrence characteristics in mainland China.•Address the significance of weather elements causing fire occurrence.•Recognize the impact of fire prevention on fire occurrence. Understanding the degree to which weather factors influence fire occurrence is crucial for managing wildfires because China's recent rigorous fire prevention measures have made fire occurrence drivers distinct from those in other nations. This study first examined the features of mainland China wildfires in order to provide an explanation. We used 38,158 confirmed wildfires from 2005 to 2021 and used a partial least squares (PLS) regression model and partial correlation analysis (PCA) to investigate which weather element is more important in driving wildfire occurrence in each of the twelve ecoregions in mainland China. According to the findings, there were less wildfires in mainland China reduced significantly from 2005 to 2021 (R2 = 0.78, P