Global warming, side effects
The risk of fires becomes even more real due to climate change. According to forecasts for this century, by 2100 the risk of fires will be high even in regions of the world that have always been considered less vulnerable.
The hypothesis was formulated in the study Climate change impacts on regional fire weather in heterogeneous landscapes of central Europe published in the “Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences” section of the European Geosciences Union.
The risk of fires in temperate zones
If global warming has made the risk of fires more likely, the summers of 2021, 2022 and 2023 have confirmed this: forest fires have plagued North America and southern Europe, favored by hot, dry and windy weather. Everything suggests that, with increasingly higher temperatures, the situation could worsen and even extend to other temperate zones.
Summer heat waves and prolonged periods of drought reduce soil moisture and increase the flammability of vegetation regardless of whether a fire occurs or not. In fact, from a meteorological point of view, the risk of fire increases with higher temperatures, wind speed and lower relative humidity.
Read also “Red alert” for the climate: what do the 2023 global warming records tell us?
The role of climate change
Projections show that alterations in these variables more than double the possibility of fire outbreaks until the end of the 21st century, but above all they will tend to increase duration, gravity and spatial extension. Conditions, these, that theIPCC had already highlighted in the report Climate Change 2021.
In the next decades (2070-2099) the percentage of days with fire danger will increase from 10% to 33% in the Alps, from 25% to 50% in the pre-Alpine area and southern Germany, and from 33% to 60% in the eastern mountain ranges. Fire season currently starts in June – this means that at that time of year the vegetation is already dry – and this lasts until September.
In the future, weather conditions that favor these phenomena could bring forward to May and the Overall drier climate will make it more difficult to control fires.
Unfavorable weather conditions will be increasingly frequent: this requires us to plan ahead, the study suggests, by preparing water tanks for fire-fighting helicopters. The evidence, however, leads to the need for more incisive global choices. Palliative solutions may not be enough.
