BRUSSELS — Climate change is rendering Europe more flammable, vastly increasing the odds of the tinderbox conditions that fueled this week’s megafires in France and Spain, said researchers Friday.
Enormous blazes have spread around Bordeaux and Madrid since the weekend, forcing mass evacuations and destroying hundreds of homes. The fires — some of the worst ever seen in the two countries — spread with ease following persistent drought and heat.
Global warming made the combination of high temperatures, dry soils and windy weather at least twice as likely in France and at least 20 times more likely in Spain, according to a rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution, a consortium of scientists using peer-reviewed methods to investigate the influence of climate change on specific disasters.
The scientists had already found that climate change increased the likelihood of the record-breaking Western European heat wave in late June as well as the spring drought — both events that made land more fire-prone.
