Europe fires already be worse than in all 2021, says EU Satellite report

In all of 2021, 470,359 hectares (4,700 km2) of forest were lost to fires, mainly in Italy and Greece

The wildfires that ripped through swathes of Europe in recent weeks have already burned a larger area of land than was lost to blazes in all of 2021, the EU’s satellite monitoring service said Thursday.

Across the European Union, fires this year, as of 16 July, have torched 517,881 hectares -- a little more than 5,000 km2 or the equivalent surface area of Trinidad and Tobago, the EFFIS monitor said.

In all of 2021, 470,359 hectares (4,700 km2) of forest were lost to fires, mainly in Italy and Greece.

2022 has seen blazes rage across France, Spain, Portugal and Greece amid a record-shattering heatwave that also saw blazes in Britain where temperatures topped 40 C for the first time on record.

EFFIS said that Europe could end 2022 with more land burned by area than 2017, currently the worst recorded year for wildfires with nearly 1,000,000 hectares (10,000 km2) lost.

“The situation is much worse than expected, even if we were expecting temperature anomalies with our long-term forecasts,” Jesus San Miguel, EFFIS coordinator, told AFP.

“We expect worse to come -- we aren’t even halfway into the fire season.”