EU faces worst fire season in history

2025-08-28 07:24:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

A record one million hectares - equivalent to around half the land area of ??Wales - have burned across the European Union so far this year, making it the worst fire season since records began in 2006.

Spain and Portugal have been particularly hard hit, with approximately 1% of the entire Iberian Peninsula burned, according to EU scientists.

The worsening fire season in the Mediterranean has been directly linked to climate change in a separate study by the World Weather Attribution group at Imperial College London.

Experts warn that more frequent and severe fires across Europe are likely to continue in the future.

More than two-thirds of the burned area in the EU is located in Spain and Portugal alone.

In Spain, more than 400,000 hectares have burned since the beginning of this year until August 26, according to the European Copernicus Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

This record is more than six times higher than the Spanish average for this time period between 2006 and 2024.

Neighboring Portugal has also suffered a record burning area of ??270,000 hectares so far - almost five times the average for the same period.

The combined area burned across the Iberian Peninsula this year is 684,000 hectares - four times the area of ??Greater London, and most of it burned in just two weeks.

The fires are concentrated in forest areas of northern Portugal and in the northwestern regions of Spain, Galicia, Asturias and Castile and León.

Protected areas such as the Picos de Europa National Park have been affected, as have major routes on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage network, which usually attracts more than 100,000 visitors during the summer months.

The events have triggered the largest known deployment of the EU civil protection mechanism's firefighting force.

Smoke from the fires has significantly reduced air quality in the area, with southerly winds carrying the smoke as far as France and the United Kingdom.

Climate change makes the conditions that lead to wildfires more likely, but in a vicious cycle, fires also release more planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) into our atmosphere.

CO2 emitted from fires in Spain this year has reached a record 17.68 million tonnes, according to the EU. That is more than any total annual CO2 emissions from fires in the country since 2003, when data was first recorded by satellites.

For comparison, it is more than the total annual CO2 emitted by the entire Croatia in 2023.

Firefighters have been battling blazes across Europe this summer.

Human-caused climate change made fire-prone conditions in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus about 10 times more likely, according to a rapid attribution study by the World Weather Attribution group at Imperial College London.

This was responsible for a 22% increase in extreme weather conditions behind the fires, the WWA said.

It is causing more extreme heat, which dries out vegetation, increasing flammability, said Theodore Keeping, a fire scientist at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London.

The continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to more of these extreme fires, researchers warned.

"It was urgent 10 years ago to stop burning fossil fuels," said Dr. Fredi Otto, Professor of Climate Science at Imperial and leader of the WWA, describing it as "deadly for people and ecosystems."

"Today, with 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming [since pre-industrial times], we are seeing new extremes in forest fire behavior that have pushed firefighters to their limits," Mr. Keeping said.

Scientists have begun a rapid analysis of the fires in Spain and Portugal and expect similar findings related to climate change.

Across southern and eastern Europe, rural depopulation is also contributing to intense fires, Mr. Keeping added.

In regions like Spain and Portugal, a growing number of young people are moving to cities in search of more lucrative employment. Once-managed farmland is being abandoned and overgrown, eliminating fire zones and increasing the amount of flammable vegetation susceptible to intense flames./ CNA