The study, conducted by the academic partnership ‘World Weather Attribution’ in collaboration with the Portuguese Red Cross, found that major fires in Portugal and Spain were “substantially amplified” by climate change, which exacerbates hot, dry, and windy weather conditions.
The authors, focusing on the northwestern region of the Iberian Peninsula, reported that weather conditions favorable to fires are now more likely and about 30% more intense compared to pre-industrial times.
Heatwaves, which before the industrial revolution would be expected less than once every 2,500 years, now occur on average every 12 years in the two countries. Climate change has made them roughly 200 times more likely and about 3 °C (degrees Celsius) more intense, the study indicates.
The newly released analysis, based on meteorological observations and fire risk metrics, “shows that events once considered extremely rare now occur much more frequently, making large fires more likely and more intense.”
Furthermore, the report notes that, in addition to global warming, other factors increasing fire frequency include rural-to-urban migration over the past decades, agricultural abandonment and biomass accumulation (which raise the available fuel quantity), and insufficient management practices.
The researchers recommend structured preventive measures and local land management (fuel management, grazing, controlled burns, mechanical clearing) alongside “ambitious public policies on adaptation and emission mitigation” (energy transition).
Portugal lost over 260,000 hectares to fires this year, about 3% of its national land area and nearly three times the annual average. In Spain, more than 380,000 hectares were burned — nearly five times the annual average.
The burned area in the Iberian Peninsula accounts for about two-thirds of the total area burned in Europe, which exceeded one million hectares in August for the first time since records began in 2006, the researchers highlight.
