2023-08-30 15:19:23
In Greece, for the second time in a month, the forest is burning. which represents the “largest fire ever recorded in the European Union” extends the list of fires recorded throughout the summer, such as in Italy, Tunisia or Algeria, while the Mediterranean rim experienced one of the longest periods of heat wave ever measured – temperatures could be around 45 °C at the end of July.
At the end of August 2023, the area of burned forests in Europe was 40% higher than the average recorded over the period 2006-2022 by the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis). However, this toll remains much lower than the devastation recorded during the summer of 2022, when the area of hectares burned was six times higher than the average on the European continent (and seven times in France).
The study of fires in the summer of 2023 on a European scale shows significant disparities. In Italy (× 1.3), Spain (× 1.3), France (× 1.9), Switzerland (× 3.7) and of course Greece (× 4), the fires are larger than the average of the last sixteen years. Further north, fires are breaking out in countries that are usually not very exposed, such as Lithuania (× 18.7), Estonia (× 7.6) or Austria (× 5.5).
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Only a small part of Europe (Sweden, Turkey, Cyprus, the Balkans with the exception of Bulgaria) is currently benefiting from a milder fire season than usual. In Ukraine, the burned area is twice the average of previous years.
These graphs for the year 2023 represent the hectares burned in several European countries and the Mediterranean basin, in . These areas are compared to the average established between 2006 and 2022.
The level of burned forest areas noted by the Effis are not necessarily the same as those of the Database on forest fires in Francebecause the counting methodology differs.
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