This 2025 It has been a devastating year for Spain and Portugal Because of the A large amount of forest fires that they have been giving, In many cases intentionallybut that were fueled without control. A new scientific analysis has concluded that the climatic crisis has played a determining role, multiplying by 40 the probability that the extreme weather conditions that fueled the flames would be given.
Not just that. The study determines that these phenomena were 30% more intense than they would have been in a world without global warming. And this is important to highlight it: the study does not indicate that climate change causes fires, but they intensify their force of destruction when they make them uncontrollable more likely.
Putting figures. The reportprepared by the World Weather Attribution network, put figures to a catastrophe of historical dimensions. On September 1, the fires had calcined about 380,000 hectares in Spain and 260,000 in Portugal. In total, 640,000 hectares, an area four times higher than that of London and represents approximately 1% of the surface of the Iberian Peninsula.
In historical terms, for Spain 2025 it will close as the fifth year with the highest burned surface since there are records in 1961. If we are going to European, we can affirm that the worst year since The EFFIS system (European Forest Fire Information System) began registering data in 2006, with more than one million hectares calcined, being two thirds of those corresponding to Spain and Portugal.
Impresses researchers. “The size of these fires has been amazing”, affirms Clair Barnes, scientist at Imperial College in London and co -author of the study. “Warmer, dry and flammable conditions are becoming more severe with climate change and are giving rise to fires of an unprecedented intensity.”
And it is that the surprise is logical. According to the data they have analyzed, they point out that these extreme risk conditions for the propagation of fire will be given every 15 years with the current climate. This is something that only happened once every 500 years in the preindustrial era.
An explosive cocktail. The fuel of these megaincendios was an unprecedented weather situation. The large amount of fires occurred during a heat wave in Spain that was one of the longest ever registered, with a duration of 16 days (from August 3 to 18). But it was not only the longest, but also the most intense, with an upper 4.6 ° C temperature anomaly compared to a pre -industrial climate.
The impact of climate change in this extreme heat is even more pronounced. According to the analysis, a ten -day heat wave as intense as the lived is now an event that is expected once every 13 years. Before humans began to heat our environment, such a heat was extremely rare and it was only expected to happen less than once every 2,500 years.
It is not just the weather. Although the report points to climate change as the great amplifier, it is not the only factor. Scientists highlight that both in Spain and Portugal, rural depopulation and population aging have left large extensions of forest land without managing, creating a massive accumulation of dry vegetation that acts as a perfect fuel. One of the examples that is put is in the decrease of traditional practices such as extensive grazing has reduced natural control over that vegetation.
David García, applied mathematician of the University of Alicante and co -author of the study, points out that the public debate in Spain has focused a lot on the decline of these rural activities. It points to that “much less the effect of climate change has been discussed in these fires, which, as has been demonstrated, has been immense.”
To this is added that human ignition, whether accidental or intention, is behind about 90% of fires whose causes are identified. With huge fuel loads and extreme weather conditions, minor human actions can trigger catastrophic results.
The science behind. To reach these conclusions, the research team analyzed the weather conditions that the fires propitiate using the daily severity index (DSR), which is a metric derived from the Canada Fire Meteorological Index (FWI). In summary, this index combines long -term rainfall data, temperature, humidity and wind to estimate the probability and severity of a fire.
In this way, the scientists compared the meteorological data observed in the current climate (which has been heated from the pre -industrial era) with a counterfactual of how these conditions would be in a climate without that warming. In this way, with the methodology used, the “footprint” of climate change in a specific extreme event can be isolated and quantified.
The result. The climatic crisis is taking the ecosystems and response capacity to the limit. For the first time, Spain activated the EU Civil Protection mechanism to request help in the fight against forest fires, and now they are already raised to apply new regulations with the aim of preparing for the future that awaits our country.
Images | Ume (x) Matt Palmer
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