forest fires of large proportions have been more and more frequent around the world. In the year 2021, European countries bathed in the Mediterranean Sea, like Greece, Turkey, Italy and Cyprus, suffered intense forest fires, which devastated hundreds of thousands of hectares, killed millions of animals and forced hundreds of people to abandon their residences.
The causes of these fires are attributed at high temperatures caused by an anticyclone, in addition to the effects of climate change, which intensified the occurrence of extreme phenomena, such as intense heat and unprecedented droughts.
Read too: Fires in the Pantanal — phenomenon that can be natural or anthropic
Summary of fires in Europe
The forest fires that occurred in Europe had a natural origin, being caused by the extreme heat that ravaged the continent in the summer months, which is due, among other factors, to the installation of an anticyclone (high pressure area) in the South region.
In 2021, the fire reached areas in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Cyprus.
Climate change played an active role in intensifying fires in Europe, with record temperatures and extreme droughts occurring.
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Causes of fires in Europe
The occurrence of fires and forest fires in areas where there is predominance of climates with a dry season, as is the case of the mediterranean climate, is not uncommon. You European countries who have experienced large-scale forest fires in recent years, especially those that occurred between July and August 2021, experience very hot and dry summers, which directly affects its vegetation and can lead to the start of fires, which spread quickly through the dry plants, especially the creeping ones. this type of incident can still occur through from the lightning strike, which gives rise to fires, in addition, of course, to fires caused by anthropic action.
The fires that occurred in part of the Mediterranean countries, including the northern region of the Africa, and from Central Europe in the year 2021, although they had natural origin, were potentiated by temperaturesrecords registeredTheonly for the summer on that continent and that were caused by the passage of an anticyclone (high pressure area), called Lucifer.
THE Greece it even registered temperatures between 45 ºC and 47 ºC, while in the region of Sicily, thermometers marked an extreme of 48.8 ºC, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe. The European summer of 2021 has been considered the third hottest on the entire planet.
In the accumulated total, more than 693,000 hectares were fired in Europe until the month of August 2021 alone. THE Italy and Greece were the two countries most punished by the action of fire, with, respectively, 120,166 and 116,365 hectares affected. Between the end of 2020 and August 2021, the European continent registered 663 forest fires.
See too: Environmental impacts — changes caused in the environment by human action
Consequences of fires in Europe
The fires that occurred in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Portugal, Spain and in the Cyprus, mainly, had short, medium and long term consequences for the inhabitants of these areas, for the ecosystems that settled in them and also for the planet as a whole.
The first direct effect is to destruction of native vegetation, death of animals which have their habitat in these areas, whose estimate reached 20 million losses in Italy alone, and the discovery of the soil, making it more susceptible to erosion.
Furthermore, most of these fires occurred in urbanized areas, some of them tourist regions, such as the Greek capital, Athens, and the island of Evia, belonging to the same country, as well as beaches in the Turkey. Many residents and tourists were forced to leave their homes and shelters as a result of the advancing flames, which led to the evacuation of entire municipalities. Countries such as Italy also registered deaths of people due to the direct action of fire or as they sought to escape to other, safer places.
![City of Athens, Greece, covered in smoke from forest fires in August 2021.[2]](/f/e5d9da33ea325b2ce4b0d64f281e940e.jpg)
such events they also emit a large amount of polluting gases in the atmosphere, causing:
respiratory problems in the population of areas affected by the drastic reduction in air quality;
acid rain, as a result of the reaction of the water with the polluting elements in suspension, and the consequent pollution of rivers and springs;
possible worsening of greenhouse effect, in the long term, leading to an increase in the Earth's temperature and thus creating a veritable vicious cycle.
What is the relationship between climate change and the worsening of fires in Europe?
At climate changes are directly associated with the worsening of fires on the European continent. Like global warming, which is characterized by the rising temperatures from the surface of planet earth, the occurrence of more and more extreme climatic phenomena is registered, such as record temperatures and severe droughts.
This was exactly the scenario that settled in Europe in the year 2021, when higher temperatures, such as the 48.8º C measured in Sicily, broke a record that had been recorded in 1995 in the same region, which was 48.5º C. This period coincided with the 50-year time span identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in which the Earth's surface temperatures rose faster than by more than two thousand years old.
Areas that were already susceptible to the natural occurrence of fires due to the dry and hot weather that sets in during the summer now they see these potentiated effects by climate change and by rising surface temperatures on the planet.
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What were the biggest fires in Europe and what did they generate?
![Devastation caused by fires in Greece in 2018.[3]](/f/cae538b499e939ab9e3e28f69c80ded5.jpg)
One of the deadliest series of fires of the current century occurred in Europe, in the Greek region of Attica, to which the city of Athens belongs. The fires took place in the year 2018 and led to the death of 103 people. They were also caused by a strong heat wave that hit that continent during the summer. It is considered the 5th deadliest fire in the world since the beginning of the 20th century.
Before that, other fires of great proportions occurred in Europe since the middle of the last century, namely:
France, 1949: 82 firefighters killed in the Landes region of southwestern France;
Greece, 2007: caused the death of 77 people on the island of Evia;
Portugal, 2017: 64 fatalities and 205 injured in the Lieira region, in the west of the country.
Image credits
[1] Alizada Studios / Shutterstock
[2] yannisscheidt / Shutterstock
[3] Ververidis Vasilis / Shutterstock
By Paloma Guitarrara
geography teacher
