In 2024, they burned 47,700 hectares. In 2025, 340,000 were exceeded. And honestly, the reasons are manyalmost too many. Well, Marco Turco, from the University of Murcia, just demonstrated something that we already sensed: at a global level, the days of extreme fire risk They have increased 65% since 1980. That’s 12 more days a year.
And, if that were not enough, the Mediterranean region is where lthe signs are clearer.
What does all this mean? In general terms, this means that although the causes of the fires remain human (in Spain between 80 and 95% of firesin fact; the intentional ones there are many less), climate change has a lot to do with its spread. Increasingly.
Why is it interesting? Because this study is the first to apply formal climate fingerprinting techniques on a global scale to fire risk. That is, that figure of 11.66 more days of extreme risk in 44 years is achieved with the most advanced methodology that we have at our disposal.
And if the global data is bad, the Mediterranean data (where the days have doubled in these almost five decades) they are horrifying.
But it’s not all bad news. After all, as Turco points outdespite the increase in risk, the burned area has not increased proportionally. And the reason, according to him, is the improvement of the means of extinction. However, “when extreme conditions coincide with ignition, the resulting fires are more virulent and extensive.”
Why is it news now? Besides because the article has just been published in Science Advances, because the precedent of 2025 (a rainy spring and a terrible summer) It resonates a lot with what we have in 2026. We don’t even have to remember that we are talking about a handful of months with truly incredible accumulated rainfall and that is generating an amount of material in the field that can easily be end up turning Spain black.
Because the core of Turco’s work is that the conditions that allow fire to spread and become a big fire They are stronger than ever. Furthermore, human exposure to these types of fires is increasing: according to recent work in Cataloniabetween 42 and 138% for each area burned since 1992.
The great debate of the future. As we have repeated on several occasions, there is no debate about the effect of climate change on increasing the risk of fire. The work is summarized in how much, how and where. Therefore, the central debate is another: what.
What we do with the cards that nature is dealing us. And the truth is that there is a lot to cut: whether to bet on extinction or preventionif investing more in the landscape management or begin to integrate the entire territory into urban planning schemes more ambitious and extensive. Etc, etc, etc. The debate is endless and we are always late.
Because what is clear thanks to Turco is that the distance that separates the spark from the megafire is increasingly shorter.
Image | Mikhail Serdyukov
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