The study, conducted by the academic partnership "World Weather Attribution" with the Portuguese Red Cross, concluded that large fires in Portugal and Spain have been "substantially amplified" by climate change, which is exacerbating hot, dry, and windy weather conditions.

The authors of the study, which focused on the northwestern region of the Iberian Peninsula, state that weather conditions conducive to fires are now more likely and about 30% more intense than in the pre-industrial period.

Major heat waves, which before the Industrial Revolution would have been expected less than once every 2,500 years, now occur in both countries on average every 12 years. In other words, they say, climate change has made them about 200 times more likely and about 3°C ​​(degrees Celsius) more intense.

The newly released analysis, based on meteorological observations and fire risk metrics, "shows that events that would previously have been extremely rare have become much more frequent, making major fires more likely and more intense."

But it also states that in addition to global warming, other factors are increasing the frequency of fires, such as the migration of rural populations to urban areas in recent decades, agricultural abandonment and biomass accumulation (which increase the amount of available fuel), and insufficient management practices.

Preventive measures

The researchers recommend structured preventive measures and local land management (fuel management, grazing, controlled burns, mechanical clearing) and "ambitious public policies for adaptation and emissions mitigation" (energy transition).

Portugal lost more than 260,000 hectares in this year's fires, about 3% of the country's land area and almost three times the annual average. In Spain, more than 380,000 hectares were burned – almost five times the annual average.

The burned area in the Iberian Peninsula represents about two-thirds of the total burned area in Europe, which surpassed one million hectares in August for the first time since records began in 2006, the study authors point out.