In southern Albania, firefighters are currently battling fires in and around the village of Mesopotam. In Algeria, the Civil Protection announced this morning that all the violent fires that have ravaged several regions of the country over the past three days have been extinguished. In Croatia, 755 firefighters and 10 Canadair aircraft have been mobilized to extinguish no fewer than 122 fires across the country over the past month.
North Macedonia declared a 30-day “state of crisis” in mid-July to control several forest fire fronts. Two weeks ago, in Italy, the headquarters of RAI, the public broadcaster, was threatened by flames that were racing down a wooded hillside in Rome. At the same time, Spanish firefighters were battling a fire that devastated 2,000 hectares east of Madrid, the capital.
Climate change is generating extreme weather events: more and more heatwaves with record temperatures, persistent droughts and strong winds. The French National Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research (INRAE) has just published a study that assesses the evolution of the risk of fires in France under the effects of climate change.
“We expect fire activity, that is, the number of fires, but also their surface area, to increase in the years to come,” explains Eric Rigolot, a research engineer at INRAE’s Mediterranean Forest Ecology Unit. “Starting from the areas historically affected by these fires in the south of France, these fires will experience a geographical extension to other regions of France. As in 2022 when we had fires in almost all French departments. And in the so-called “historical” areas, the large fires will gain in intensity.” Scientists are observing the same trend in all countries around the Mediterranean. Worse, even northern Europe is beginning to experience “fire seasons,” warns Eric Rigolot, who lists recent fires “in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, central Europe and Germany. The most significant was in 2018 when very large fires developed in Sweden, therefore on the Scandinavian peninsula. We did not expect this to happen so soon. We even had reinforcements from French firefighters who went to fight the fires in Sweden. “
If climate change therefore considerably increases the risk of fires, everyone must be careful as soon as they are in nature in summer 90% of fires are of human origin. The great classic unfortunately remains the cigarette butt thrown out of the car window.
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