The preliminary fire balance in the European Union points to a new record at this stage of the year, with more than 660,000 hectares burned since January, with Portugal being the third country with the largest fire area.
The fires have devastated 662,776 hectares of forests in the European Union since January 1, according to data updated on Sunday by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which has kept comparable statistics since 2006 thanks to satellite imagery from Europe’s Copernicus program. .
The area most affected by the fires is the Iberian Peninsula, and while the high fire season is not yet over, data from the European Union shows the most severe situation ever seen at this time of year.
The previous European record was set in 2017, when by August 13, 420,913 hectares were burned, and in just a year – 988,087 hectares, that is, more than 400,000 in one month.
In Spain this summer, a severe drought and several heat waves have devastated 246,278 hectares, mostly in Galicia in the northwest.
In terms of area burned, after Spain, Romania (150,528 ha), Portugal (75,277 ha) and France (61,289 ha) were the most affected, according to the European Service.
France experienced its worst years in the 1970s before normalized European data, but 2022 is the worst year in 16 years, according to those figures, largely due to two consecutive fires in the Gironde in southwestern France. Austrian firefighters arrived this week as reinforcements.
During the summer period only, “2022 is already a record year,” said Jesús San Miguel, EFFIS coordinator, France Presse.
Exceptional drought in Europe, combined with heat waves, is fueling wildfires.
These conditions were more common in countries bordering the Mediterranean, but “this is exactly what happened in Central Europe”, which has not yet been affected by these meteorological events, adds Jesús San Miguel.
For example, in the Czech Republic, the fire destroyed more than 1000 hectares, which is not much compared to other countries, but 158 times more than the average for 2006-2021, when fires were insignificant.
In Slovenia, firefighters took more than ten days in July to put out the largest fire in the country’s recent history, fueled by a population so mobilized that the government had to ask residents to stop donating firefighters.
However, in Central Europe, the burned area is still small compared to the tens of thousands of hectares in Spain, France or Portugal, but continued global warming in Europe should only exacerbate this trend.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
