‘Extremely scary findings’ show climate crisis is supercharging Europe’s wildfire weather

The extreme heat and drought stoking huge wildfires in Spain and France were made far more likely by the climate crisis, a scientific analysis has found.

Global heating made hot, dry and windy weather at least 20 times more likely in Spain and twice as likely in France, experts from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium calculated. The finding is the latest to pin the blame for the continent’s sweltering and deadly summer firmly on the heating caused by the burning of oil, gas and coal.

The intense heatwave at the end of June, which is estimated to have killed 20,000 people, could not have happened without the extra heat trapped by carbon pollution, a previous WWA study showed. Another found that the climate crisis-driven heat was “sucking soils dry” as extreme drought spread across Europe.

Searing heat and parched land led to very high “daily severity ratings”, the metric that was used in the new analysis and which measures how severe a wildfire will be if ignited. Studies of the 2025 wildfires also found they were supercharged by the climate crisis.

This year’s wildfires in western Europe have been made worse by a wet winter and spring, which boosted the growth of vegetation, which then dried out and provided fuel for the fires – so-called whiplash conditions. Global heating is making winters wetter and summers drier and hotter in Europe.

Dr Clair Barnes, a research associate at Imperial College London and part of the WWA study team, said: “We’ve seen repeatedly how climate change increases hot, dry, flammable conditions that are extremely conducive to wildfires.

“What’s unique about [the July fires in Spain and France] is that it’s still early in the season – and with another heatwave looming, these findings are extremely scary. What we’re seeing is a clear sign of the escalating impacts of [human-caused] warming.”

Julie Arrighi, the director of programmes at Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said: “What we are seeing now in Spain and France goes well beyond what we would expect from past events.”

The wildfires have released huge plumes of toxic smoke. Dr Augustin Colette, at the French National Institute for Industrial Environment and Risks, said: “The smoke increased particulate [pollution] peak levels up to 20 times above what is considered ‘fair air quality’, and extremely poor air quality was felt up to 400 km away from the fires.” About 1.5 million people a year are estimated to have their lives shortened by wildfire smoke.

Severe wildfires have burned across Spain and France since early July, killing people, destroying thousands of homes, and forcing more than 300,000 people to flee. The WWA analysis assessed the seven-day period with the highest daily severity ratings (DSR) for each country. The scientists used weather records and established statistical methods to estimate how much more likely a week of extremely high DSR is in today’s heated world compared with in the world before mass fossil-fuel burning raised the global temperature by 1.4C (2.5F).

Big wildfires have also broken out in the UK and Greece, where three firefighters lost their lives.

The UN’s climate chief, Simon Stiell, said: “These European megafires show how fast climate-driven extreme heat and dry landscapes can turn wildfires into devastating national disasters.

“Humanity continuing to burn colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas is making these conditions more dangerous, and these megafires more deadly and destructive,” he said. “But the solutions are equally clear: all countries must move faster from fossil fuels to renewables and protect people from worsening climate impacts, from wildfires, to megastorms and floods, to droughts hitting food production.”

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