Wildfires blaze across Europe, surpassing 2017 devastation, marking worst season since 2006.
Spain, Portugal, Germany, Cyprus face unprecedented destruction amid extreme heatwave conditions.
Fires release 37 million tonnes CO₂, worsen air quality, threaten human and environmental health.
Wildfires blazing the EU have ravaged more than a million hectares of forests this year, marking 2025 as the worst season on record since monitoring began in 2006, according to Down To Earth.
The fires—that choked cities, charred homes and wiped out forests surpassing the devastation of 2017 when fires consumed 988,524 hectares—are expected to continue for several more weeks.
Citing the data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), AFP reported that over 1,015,700 hectares have been torched so far — an area larger than Cyprus, an island country in the eastern Mediterranean.
The Guardian reported that the wildfires have released 37 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, about the annual emissions of Portugal or Sweden, each with a population of 10 million people. The fires have also surpassed records for this time of year for nine other air pollutants, including fine particulates known as PM2.5 that make wildfires far more deadly.
According to AFP, four countries in the European Union including, Spain, Cyprus, Germany and Slovakia, have already experienced their worst wildfire seasons in nearly two decades.
Romania has recorded four times its average number of blazes this year with 126,000 hectares, while France has seen more than double its historic mean, with 35,671 hectares burned this year compared with 13,587 hectares on average.
As reported by Down To Earth, Germany has experienced an unprecedented increase, with 5,351 hectares destroyed, almost eight times its 20-year average of 671 hectares. In Portugal, over 60,000 hectares have been blazed during the current heatwave.
Spain too is struggling with numerous fires, with 411,315 hectares burned — accounting for 40% of all European Union fires this year, far above its annual average of 79,570 hectares.
The country’s national meteorological agency Aemet explained in a post on X that the 16-day heatwave from August 3 to 18 was the worst on record, with average temperatures 4.6 degrees Celsius higher than normal. Furthermore, Aemet added that the period from August 8 to 17 was the hottest 10 consecutive days in Spain since at least 1950.
The unprecedented fires have not only caused environmental destruction but also strained the firefighting resources and emergency services across the continent, with firefighting resources stretched thin in many affected countries amid relentless heatwaves.
