Wildfires were 30% more intense than would have been expected without global heating, scientists say
The extreme weather that fuelled “astonishing” blazes across Spain and Portugal last month was made 40 times more likely by climate breakdown, early analysis suggests.
The deadly wildfires, which torched 500,000 hectares (1.2m acres) of the Iberian peninsula in a matter of weeks, were also 30% more intense than scientists would have expected in a world without climate change, according to researchers from the World Weather Attribution network.
“The sheer size of these fires has been astonishing,” said Clair Barnes, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-author of the study. “Hotter, drier and more flammable conditions are becoming more severe with climate change, and are giving rise to fires of unprecedented intensity.”
The researchers found that such conditions could have occurred once every 500 years in the preindustrial climate, but in today’s world – which has been warmed by the heat-trapping pollution from burning coal, oil and gas – they could be expected every 15 years.
