Conditions as hot, dry and windy as those leading up to the giant wildfires in France and Spain this week have become more likely in those countries since humans began warming the planet, according to a new analysis.
A team of scientists examined weather records to see how often the regions around Bordeaux, in southwest France, and Madrid have been as parched and primed to burn as they have been in the past few weeks. The researchers’ findings are the latest evidence that parts of Southern Europe should expect huge fires to become a recurring threat.
Such severe conditions are relatively rare for southwest France, with a 5 percent chance of appearing in any year there, the researchers estimated. But they were even less likely before humans began warming the planet by burning coal, gas and oil for energy, with half the probability of occurring, the researchers said.
For central Spain, the scientists found that the intense heat and dryness in July had roughly a 17 percent probability of occurring in a given year in the present-day climate. In the preindustrial world, however, the likelihood of such conditions would have been one-twentieth as high, the researchers estimated.
The new analysis of the blazes was conducted by World Weather Attribution, a research collaboration that examines extreme weather events to assess how much they were shaped by climate change. The group’s report on the latest fires has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal.
“We’ve seen repeatedly how climate change increases hot, dry, flammable conditions that are extremely conducive to wildfires,” said Clair Barnes, a climate researcher at Imperial College London and lead author of the analysis. “What’s unique about this case is that it’s still early in the season.” Southern Europe’s wildfire season generally runs from March through October.
Officials said on Thursday that the giant fires menacing Bordeaux and Madrid had begun to stabilize somewhat. Many people who had been evacuated were being allowed to return home.
The two blazes are the countries’ largest on record since the European Union started keeping track. In France, 40 percent more land has already burned this year than in the entirety of 2022, previously the country’s worst year for wildfire.
A separate study, published on Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, found that in large parts of Mediterranean Europe, the number of extremely hot, dry and windy summer days more than doubled from 1981 to 2025.
For much of that period, the amount of land burned each year by wildfires largely declined, even as the region heated, said Julien Ruffault, a researcher at France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment. The reason, he said, was increased government spending on fire prevention measures and firefighting capabilities.
In recent years, however, the atmosphere’s warming has begun to overwhelm the effectiveness of those initiatives, Dr. Ruffault said.
“The size of these fires and the behavior of these fires is getting more and more uncontrollable,” he said. “We have to do something else.”
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