The amount of land burned by wildfires in Europe each year could rise by 192 percent by the end of this century under a high-emissions pathway, according to research published on Thursday by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Senckenberg Society. The modelling, reported by The Guardian, EFE and EUobserver, found that hotter, drier and windier conditions linked to climate change would be the principal force behind the increase.
Researchers compared projected annual burned area in 2070-2100 with modelled results for 2000-2030. Under a lower-emissions pathway associated with about 1.8 degrees Celsius of global warming above preindustrial levels, they calculated a 39 percent increase. Under the high-emissions pathway, associated with about 3.6 degrees of warming, the projected increase reached 192 percent, meaning the annual area affected would be close to three times the reference level.
The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, also tested how changes in fire management could alter the outcome. Continued improvements in prevention and suppression reduced projected burned area by 92 percent in the cooler scenario compared with keeping management effectiveness at current levels. The researchers nevertheless found that management alone could not fully offset the effect of severe warming, especially on a high-emissions course.
Lead author Maik Billing of the Potsdam institute said investment in fire management could limit damage, but the results showed that it could not replace reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. The analysis identified worsening fire weather, rather than shifts in population or land use alone, as the largest driver of future change. Hot, dry and windy periods allow small ignitions to spread more rapidly and make suppression more difficult.
The findings arrive during an exceptionally destructive European fire season. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System cited by The Guardian showed that more than 600,000 hectares had burned across the European Union, placing 2026 on course to become the third-worst season in the system's record after 2025 and 2022. Belgium, France and Slovakia had already registered their largest burned areas for this point of the year.
The projections do not predict the location or timing of individual fires, but they indicate how strongly future losses depend on decisions made now. The authors' results support a combined strategy of cutting emissions while expanding prevention, landscape management, early detection and firefighting capacity. European authorities will need to prepare for broader fire exposure even in the lower-warming case, while avoiding the high-emissions pathway would substantially reduce the scale of the danger.
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