A cruel summer as record wildfires scorch Europe – DW – 08/15/2025

DW

2 days ago

Wildfires continue to test firefighters and locals across Europe as droughts and heatwaves turn regions into tinderboxes. The data for 2025 alone is a sign of things to come.
Wildfires continue to burn across the south of Europe amid record-breaking summer heatwaves in many fire-prone regions.
In some places, these fires have been exacerbated by wet spring months, which have helped vegetation growth capable of catching alight with ease during a dry summer.
Already, an area equivalent to 1.5 times the size of Luxembourg — roughly 438,568 hectares — has burned across Europe in 2025. That figure is almost three times the size of fire damaged caused up to the same point in 2024.
It comes as some parts of southern Europe suffer through multiple 40-degree (104 Fahrenheit) days, and prolonged heatwaves lasting a fortnight.
The current summer has been described as the worst for wildfires in two decades.
"We're seeing extreme temperatures in large parts of Europe, records being broken of 40 degrees in many places," said Julie Berckmans, a climate scientist at the European Environmental Agency.
"Southern France, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Belgium, Netherlands, UK, are all hitting high temperatures [and] massive wildfires in Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Turkey, Albania."
In Spain, those fires have burned through an area the size of London already.
Portugal is fighting its own fires, with around four thousand firefighters currently active across seven active sites. It has also been forced to request help from the European Union's firefighting forces.
An even greater number of firefighters has been mobilized in Greece, which is battling 20 blazes during this peak fire season.
Deaths have occurred in Spain, Montenegro and Italy from fires and heat-related events this summer.
Europe uses data from its Copernicus satellite fleet to monitor fire activity, and collates the data via the European Forest Fires Information System (EFFIS).
A substantial amount of fire damage in 2025 has already occured.
More than 250,000 hectares more of land has burnt than the same time in 2024.
There have more than 1,600 fires across Europe, compared to just under 1,100 last year.
And new regions are also experiencing greater than usual fire activity.
Spain, for instance, has seen twice as much of its territory burned-through compared to the 2006-2024 average. Romania has lost four times as much land to fires this year.
Cyprus has been badly impacted. It could usually expect to see around 0.32% of its landmass burned each year. Already in 2025 it's 2.5% — nearly eight times more.
But it's also the number of fires that is concerning. France has had nearly three times as many fires as average amid what has been the worst wildfire season for its southern regions in decades.
The fallout of severe wildfires goes beyond land loss or human fatalities. Damage to ecosystems through vegetation loss, health impacts through smoke inhalation, and economic decline are all consequences of widespread fire events.
"It's about €2.5 billion [$2.9 billion] of damage lost every year in the EU," Berckmans told DW. "45,000 people on average were displaced due to wildfires from 2008 to 2023."
The European Environment Agency's first climate risk assessment, published in 2024, found that urgent action is required to address the critical risk wildfires will pose to populations and infastructure and biodiversity in southern Europe.
"Wildfires are an urgent risk to address," said Berckmans. "It's also a major risk that needs more action now in the rest of Europe."
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As European fall approaches, the number of fires and the damage they cause should slow. However forecasting the length of fire danger season, and the behavior of fires themselves, is becoming more difficult.
Climate change will not only generate warmer and drier conditions across southern Europe, it will also begin to change other dynamic factors.
Faster and more volatile wind systems, for instance, will increase the challenge for fire management personnel to predict how blazes will behave. That puts the lives of emergency workers and civilians at greater risk.
"Picture a fire so fierce, so fast, and so unpredictable it seems alive, capable of reshaping the weather around it and leaping across kilometers in a heartbeat," said Antonio Lopez, an expert in wildfires at the University of Seville, Spain.