This is a well-written and timely contribution that will have significant impact on the wildfire research and management community. The multi-region approach is interesting and commendable, and the combination of attribution methodology with vegetation and land-use analysis provides a genuinely comprehensive picture of the 2025 European fire season. The writing is generally clear and technically rigorous, though at times sentences become complex enough to obscure the intended meaning for a first-time reader. The figure captions, while necessarily detailed for a paper of this scope, tend toward verbosity and contain some internal redundancy that could be reduced. A few methodological clarifications are needed — most notably regarding the use of the term "anomaly" in figures where ratios rather than differences appear to be plotted. Once these are addressed, the paper will be in excellent shape for publication. See the supplement for the suggested revisions.

The manuscript addresses an important and timely topic and provides a broad regional analysis of the 2025 European wildfire season. The combination of fire-weather attribution, vegetation trends, and land-use change is valuable. However, some sections would benefit from clearer wording, reduced repetition, and smoother explanation of the research gap and methodological logic. In several places, the text is scientifically meaningful but syntactically heavy, which may reduce readability for a broad NHESS audience. I consider the manuscript suitable for publication after revision.

Line 25 / Abstract

The phrase “drier summer summers” appears to contain a repetition/typo. Please revise.

Introduction / early framing

Some sentences in the introduction are very long and contain several ideas at once. Consider splitting them to improve readability, especially where fire weather attribution, vegetation trends, and land-use analysis are introduced together.

Line 36

Remove extra space after “was “.

Line 42

Maybe better not to start the sentence with 2025; for example, “The European wildfire season also recorded...”

Line 44

This sentence provides useful impact context, but smoke is not a central component of the study. Consider shortening it or linking it more clearly to the motivation for studying extreme wildfire seasons.

Line 51–54

This sentence is conceptually important but difficult to follow. Consider simplifying the structure after “allows” and clarifying that the study assesses how changing wildfire drivers contribute to the severity of extreme wildfire seasons.

Lines 117, 188, 218, 222, and 238–246

Several regional background statements would benefit from stronger citation support.

Line 190

The phrase “low, highly connected vegetation” may be vague for some readers. Consider revising to “short, continuous vegetation” or “connected surface fuels” to clarify that “low” refers to vegetation height, not low fuel amount.

Line 255

Please remove the repetition of “detailed” and make the research-gap explanation smoother. The contrast between the relatively strong understanding of recent regional wildfire drivers and the limited understanding of longer-term fire-regime changes due to the short satellite-based record is important, but it could be expressed more clearly.

Methods section

The methodological framework is strong, but some readers may benefit from a clearer explanation of why specific variables were selected, especially HDWI, VPD, seasonal effective precipitation, LAI, and managed land fraction. A short linking paragraph could help connect these variables to the conceptual wildfire-driver framework.

Discussion

The discussion is rich and well connected to the results, but some claims could be made more cautious where the evidence is indirect, especially when interpreting LAI and land-use change as proxies for fuel load, fuel continuity, or abandonment effects.

Conclusion

The conclusion effectively summarizes the main regional contrasts, but it is quite dense. Consider shortening some sentences and emphasizing the main contribution more clearly: climate change has increased key fire-weather hazards, while vegetation and land-use changes modulate regional wildfire potential.