2024-04-10T18:26:54+00:00
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/ The European Commission’s Joint Research Center described, on Wednesday, the fires that Europe witnessed during the year 2023 as “the worst” during the current century.
A report by the Center on forest fires in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, reported by Reuters, stated that forest fires in Europe burned in an area of more than half a million hectares, equivalent to twice the area of Luxembourg, adding that the 2023 forest fire season on the continent was among The worst this century.
According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, the three worst years this century in terms of the size of areas exposed to fires were in 2017, when fires burned in an area estimated at about 988,427 hectares, and in 2022, when the area reached 837,212 hectares, while it reached About 588 thousand and 388 hectares in 2007.
The report shows that forest fires worsened during the summer of 2023, as they mainly affected the Mediterranean region, and Greece was exposed to the largest fire the European continent has witnessed since the 1980s near Alexandroupoli.
The report stated that climate change is increasing the frequency of forest fires, and fires are increasingly affecting areas that were not considered vulnerable to fires in the past.
He added that the situation is likely to deteriorate, according to the European Climate Risk Assessment report issued last March.
Preliminary data for the first three months of 2024 show that the number of fires has almost doubled compared to the general average. Although the number of fires increased, they did not cause significant damage to the areas where the fires burned.
According to the report, the forest fires released about 20 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to nearly a third of all emissions from international aviation in the European Union in one year.
The final report for 2023 is scheduled to be published next fall.