Articles | Volume 26, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-26-3761-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-26-3761-2026
© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
13 Aug 2026
Research article |
| 13 Aug 2026
| 13 Aug 2026
Attribution of the record breaking 2025 European fire season to climate change
Theodore R. Keeping
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, UK
Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London, London, UK
Mariam Zachariah
Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, UK
Olivia Haas
Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London, London, UK
Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment, Paris Saclay University, Paris, France
Manolis Grillakis
Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London, London, UK
School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece
Clair Barnes
Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, UK
Gareth D. Clay
Department of Geography, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Bikem Ekberzade
Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Türkiye
Orjeta Jaupaj
Institute of Geosciences, Polytechnic University of Tirana, Tirana, Albania
Andreia Ribeiro
Department of Compound Environmental Risks, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Ricardo Trigo
Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Apostolos Voulgarakis
Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London, London, UK
School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece
Friederike E. L. Otto
Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, UK
Data sets
Attribution of The Record Breaking 2025 European Fire Season to Climate Change Theodore R. Keeping https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18839225
Short summary
2025 broke wildfire records across European regions. For five regions, we identify the weather, vegetation and management conditions that drove these extreme fires. We found the change in the likelihood and intensity of similar driving “fire weather”, from before human-caused warming to present, and from now to a likely future climate. Summer drought and hot, dry and windy conditions have shifted rapidly, with 2025’s conditions no longer rare in some regions despite devastating fires.
2025 broke wildfire records across European regions. For five regions, we identify the weather,...
Altmetrics
Final-revised paper
Preprint