Climate change’s fingerprints are all over the extreme fire weather that sparked this week’s devastating wildfires in Spain and France and has spiked Southern Europe’s burning the past eight years, two new studies conclude.
Human-caused climate change made the hot and dry conditions responsible for Spain’s record-sized inferno 20 times more likely to happen, and it doubled the chances of extreme fire conditions for the flames in France, scientists at World Weather Attribution calculated in a rapid analysis Thursday, conducted while fires were still burning. Warming in the past 26 years has tripled the odds of the severe fire risk conditions in Spain and increased the chances in France 40%, the same report found.
