Worst Fire Season On Record For EU - At Least 1 Million Hectares Burned, Along W. Record Output Of CO2, Other Pollutants

Wildfires ravaging the EU have torched more than 1m hectares this year, marking 2025 as the worst year on record, a full month before the fire season ends. Deadly infernos that have emptied out villages and forced farmers to become firefighters have engulfed four times as much land this year as the average for the same period over the past two decades, according to official data that was updated on Friday and may be revised further.

The fires have charred homes, blackened forests and choked far-off cities. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which goes back to 2003, shows 1,015,024 hectares have burned this year – breaking the previous record of 988,544 hectares that was set in 2017, with weeks of dangerous fire weather still to come.

The destructive blazes have pumped out 37m tonnes of carbon dioxide – about as much as the yearly CO2 emissions of Portugal or Sweden, each home to 10 million people. The fires have also broken records for this time of year for nine other air pollutants, including fine particulates known as PM2.5 that experts say make wildfires far more deadly than previously thought. Cristina Santín Nuño, a fire scientist at the Spanish National Research Council, said the “perfect conditions” for big and dangerous wildfires were happening more and more because of changes in the climate and how people used the land. “It is sad and scary – my home region is burning right now – but not surprising, really,” she said.

Wildfires ripped through swathes of southern Europe this month as a heatwave made longer and stronger by fossil fuel pollution pushed temperatures above 40C across much of the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The drawn-out spells of blistering heat dried out vegetation, which in countries such as Spain and Portugal had grown rapidly after a wet spring, allowing fires to burn hotter and spread farther.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/22/eu-wildfires-worst-year-on-record-as-season-continues