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FILE – A firefighter carries a hose while battling a wildfire in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, west of Madrid, Spain, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Manu Fernandez\/AP Photo\/Manu Fernandez<\/p>\n
FILE – A plane releases fire retardant as it flies over a forest near Blagon, during wildfires in southwestern France, July 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Emma Da Silva\/AP Photo\/Emma Da Silva<\/p>\n
FILE – Forest rangers work in a wildfire-scorched area near Casillas, Avila province, Spain, July 30, 2026.<\/p>\n
Olmo Calvo\/AP Photo\/Olmo Calvo<\/p>\n
FILE – An area scorched by a wildfire surrounds structures in El Tiemblo, Avila province, Spain, Thursday, July 30, 2026.<\/p>\n
Manu Fernandez\/AP Photo\/Manu Fernandez<\/p>\n
FILE – Volunteers try to help stop a wildfire from advancing in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, west of Madrid, Spain, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Manu Fernandez\/AP Photo\/Manu Fernandez<\/p>\n
FILE – A firefighter walks in front of burning trees as a wildfire rages near Marcheprime, outside, Bordeaux, France, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Emma Da Silva\/AP Photo\/Emma Da Silva<\/p>\n
Climate change’s fingerprints are all over the extreme fire weather that sparked this week’s devastating wildfires in Spain and France and has spiked Southern Europe’s burning the past eight years, two new studies conclude.<\/p>\n
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Human-caused climate change made the hot and dry conditions responsible for Spain’s record-sized inferno 20 times more likely to happen, and it doubled the chances of extreme fire conditions for the flames in France, scientists at World Weather Attribution calculated in a rapid analysis Thursday, conducted while fires were still burning. Warming in the past 26 years has tripled the odds of the severe fire risk conditions in Spain and increased the chances in France 40%, the same report found.<\/p>\n
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At the same time, researchers published a separate study<\/a> on Thursday \u2014 written and edited long before this week’s fires began \u2014 that found the number of days that Southern Europe’s weather reached extreme fire-prone levels has more than doubled compared to decades ago.<\/p>\n Both studies examined changes in the weather that creates fire-prone conditions. The measurements factor in air temperature, drought conditions, humidity and wind.<\/p>\n “The change in these fire weather conditions in Spain is really extremely strong and is, I think, one of the largest changes that I’ve seen,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College of London climate scientist who coordinates World Weather Attribution. Spain is having its hottest summer on record, after an incredibly wet January that allowed plants to grow before a severe drought hit, a combination that increased wildfire fuel, the report said.<\/p>\n Spain also had the added problem of land abandonment, which left unmanaged plants and trees to dry out, Otto said. France’s Bordeaux region, meanwhile, had thick groves of pines that also burn well when a fire starts, she said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n World Weather Attribution \u2014 an international collaboration of scientists who examine extreme events to determine climate change’s role, if any \u2014 did that study so quickly, the report didn’t get peer reviewed, which is the scientific gold standard. But Otto and her colleagues used techniques that are scientifically accepted, and many of their reports are published in peer-reviewed journals later.<\/p>\n Warming world means fires ignite \u2018more explosively\u2019<\/p>\n Otto’s team calculated how much climate change \u2014 from the burning of coal, oil and gas \u2014 increased the chances for fires of this intensity to happen. They did so by comparing fire weather severity levels to past measurements for the region and to what they would be if the world was 2.5 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) cooler. That is how much Earth has warmed since pre-industrial times.<\/p>\n \u201cThis study makes sense and provides numbers to confirm what fire scientists already knew,\u201d said Syracuse University fire scientist Jacob Bendix, who wasn’t part of either research. \u201cWe have always known that fires ignite more easily and spread more explosively under conditions of extreme heat and drought. And we\u2019ve known for decades that extreme heat and drought are becoming more common due to anthropogenic climate change. So the general outline of these events, if not all the details, was tragically predictable.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Thursday’s other study, in the journal Scientific Reports, finds that there were about 10 extreme fire weather days a year in Southern Europe in earlier decades, but it is now up to around 25 a year, said study author Ra\u00fal Cordero, a climate scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. And it is not just more frequent bad fire weather days. Those days are about 50% more intense than they were from 1981 to 2010, his study said.<\/p>\n Fires were decreasing until climate change overwhelmed gains<\/p>\n The number of Southern European fires and amount of land burned had decreased quite a bit from the 1980s to 2018, mostly because of better fire suppression and management techniques, Cordero said. But then things quickly got worse fast because climate change overwhelmed that improvement, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn’t matter how many resources or how much money you have, you just cannot stop the propagation of a fire when the weather is so extreme,\u201d Cordero said. \u201cThe climate forcing is so extreme nowadays that it’s just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n University of California Merced fire scientist John Abatzaglou, who also wasn\u2019t part of either research, said, \u201cthese findings make clear that climate change is not just a future problem, it\u2019s already here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to stop burning fossil fuels,\u201d Otto said. \u201cBecause as long as we keep burning fossil fuels, temperatures will increase globally. And that will mean that these fire weather conditions will get worse and worse and worse. And there are hard limits to what we can adapt to.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FILE – A firefighter carries a hose while battling a wildfire in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, west of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6736,138227,138229,23681,59373,86083,85962,84874,59371,84875,87205,61262,138228,82,84,83,9611],"class_list":["post-392720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-france","tag-global-warming-wildfires-spain-france-climate-change","tag-john-abatzaglou","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30031-ap-california-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30085-ap-new-york-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30597-ap-business-news-f-wire","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31995-ap-online-general-financial-business-news","tag-product-32539-ap-online-science-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-raul-cordero","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}