So far this year, fires have burned more than 1.5 million acres across northern Portugal and northwest Spain, killing eight people and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate. The bulk of the wildfires coincided with a brutal heat wave in August, the most intense on record in Spain, which helped set the stage for the devastating burns, experts say.
During the hottest 10-day stretch, temperatures reached 109 degrees F (43 degrees C), with stifling heat drying out vegetation and leaving it more prone to burning. Before the Industrial Revolution, Spain and Portugal would have seen that kind of extreme heat roughly once every 2,500 years, but now such weather can be expected every 13 years, according to an analysis from World Weather Attribution.
Scientists say that warming made the hot, dry weather that fueled the August wildfires 40 times more likely. Their findings follow on a recent analysis of the July fires in Turkey and Greece, which found that warming made the blazes 10 times more likely.
Compounding the threat from climate change, an exodus of people from rural parts of Spain and Portugal left the land more vulnerable to burning. Forests are going unmanaged, and a decline in grazing means vegetation is becoming overgrown.
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