<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/22/eu-wildfires-worst-year-on-record-as-season-continues>
"Wildfires ravaging the EU have torched more than 1m hectares this year,
marking 2025 as the worst year on record, a full month before the fire season
ends.
Deadly infernos that have emptied out villages and forced farmers to become
firefighters have engulfed four times as much land this year as the average for
the same period over the past two decades, according to official data that was
updated on Friday and may be revised further.
The fires have charred homes, blackened forests and choked far-off cities. Data
from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which goes back to
2003, shows 1,015,024 hectares have burned this year – breaking the previous
record of 988,544 hectares that was set in 2017, with weeks of dangerous fire
weather still to come.
The destructive blazes have pumped out 37m tonnes of carbon dioxide – about as
much as the yearly CO₂ emissions of Portugal or Sweden, each home to 10 million
people. The fires have also broken records for this time of year for nine other
air pollutants, including fine particulates known as PM2.5 that experts say
make wildfires far more deadly than previously thought.
Cristina Santín Nuño, a fire scientist at the Spanish National Research
Council, said the “perfect conditions” for big and dangerous wildfires were
happening more and more because of changes in the climate and how people used
the land. “It is sad and scary – my home region is burning right now – but not
surprising, really,” she said.
Wildfires ripped through swathes of southern Europe this month as a heatwave
made longer and stronger by fossil fuel pollution pushed temperatures above 40C
across much of the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The drawn-out spells of
blistering heat dried out vegetation, which in countries such as Spain and
Portugal had grown rapidly after a wet spring, allowing fires to burn hotter
and spread farther."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
