Area of land hit by wildfires each year across Europe could triple due to climate change

CLIMATE CHANGE COULD nearly triple the area of land hit by wildfires every year in Europe, and even fuel blazes in regions with little experience of tackling them, a new study has found.

The warning comes after the continent has battled weeks of devastating wildfires fuelled by dry conditions and a historically hot summer, with Belgium, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain hit by major blazes.

Wildfires may become more unpredictable and could overwhelm even those experienced in preventing and fighting them, the study said.

“Climate change is driving up fire activity across Europe as hot, dry and windy conditions become more severe,” said lead author Maik Billing, researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

“Our results indicate there could be widespread increases in burned area even under comparatively low (global) warming of around 1.8C,” he added.

The study said that by the end of the century, in the case of low greenhouse gas emissions, around 39% more land would be burned per year compared to today’s average.

The scientists obtained the result using one of the two fire models they tested. The second suggested a possible decrease in burned areas at a low level of global warming, but the researchers cautioned that it was based on historical data that may not necessarily be repeated in the future.

“Under increasingly extreme fire-weather conditions, fire behaviour may become more unpredictable and fires may overwhelm even well-developed firefighting capacities,” Billing told AFP.

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The results are unambiguous in the event of a more pronounced increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

“If we emit more, and global temperatures rise by roughly 3.6C, we see fires become much more prevalent, especially around the Mediterranean and across much of Western and Central Europe, including areas that to date have not experienced many fires,” Billing said.

Under the high emission scenario, by 2100 nearly 192% more land would be burned per year – almost triple the area affected now.

But the study’s authors said better fire management could “substantially moderate” the increases, reducing burned area by 72-92% compared to scenarios without the improvements.

But this offset potential would be limited in the event of strong global warming.

“If Europe increases investment in wildfire management – training fire crews, proper equipment, good coordination etc – our projections show that this can make a significant difference,” said study co-author Thomas Hickler.

“But if fires become really extreme, our ability to contain them might break down and we do not know yet where this point is,” added the scientist at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Germany.

The study comes as Germany registered around 14,000 heat-related deaths this summer.

Around 9,600 of those took place in one week in late June when Germany baked in temperatures of over 40C, according to the Robert Koch Institute.

The largest share of heat-related deaths occurred in the over-75 age group, the public health authority said in a statement.

Looking back at recent years, the institute said it recorded 8,900 heat-related deaths in 2018, a figure which dropped to 2,000 or below in other years such as 2016.

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