Study finds southern Europe becoming more flammable

3 min read

A study published in Scientific Reports finds that southern Europe has seen a major rise in extreme fire-weather days since 1981, driven and attributable to global warming, with the steepest increases in France and Spain. Extreme fire-weather days rose from fewer than 10 per summer in 1981–2010 to as many as 25 per summer in 2016–2025 in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. Although the total number of fires is lower than in the 1980s in most countries, fires are now more extreme and faster, with recent record blazes including France's largest since 1949 and Spain's largest since 1961.

Extreme fire-weather days have increased sharply in southern Europe