Wildfire risk set to surge across Europe, study warns

The area of Europe burned by wildfires could increase by 39% by the end of the century even under an optimistic climate scenario, unless countries significantly improve fire management, a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has found, The Guardian reports.

Researchers compared projected annual burned areas for 2070–2100 with modeled figures for 2000–2030 and identified increasingly hot, dry and windy conditions as the main driver of the projected rise.

Under a worst-case scenario, in which global temperatures increase by 3.6°C above preindustrial levels, the area affected by wildfires could almost triple. Scientists currently expect existing climate policies to result in approximately 2.6°C of warming by the end of the century.

Improved firefighting and fire-management capabilities could reduce the projected increase by more than 70%, according to the study, although researchers cautioned that such measures would not eliminate the threat.

“Investments into fire management could help to a certain limit, but if we go on a path of high emissions … we still see strong increases in burnt area,” said Maik Billing, an ecosystem researcher at PIK and lead author of the study. “Fire management cannot replace climate mitigation.”

The findings come as wildfires continue to affect large parts of Europe. More than 600,000 hectares have already burned across the European Union this season, making 2026 the third-worst fire season on record, behind 2025 and 2022, according to the European Forest Fire Information Service.

Researchers also noted that decades of aggressive fire suppression have reduced the number and overall area of fires in parts of southern Europe but increased the amount of combustible vegetation, potentially fueling fewer but more destructive fires.

Víctor Resco de Dios, a forestry engineer at the University of Lleida who was not involved in the study, said the findings should encourage policymakers to consider both climate change and landscape management.

“The problem of wildfires wouldn’t be worsening if we were heading towards an ice age – instead of global warming,” he said. “And it would have been largely mitigated if our landscapes were like they were a century ago, with a much smaller forest area.”

By Vafa Guliyeva