Climate change aggravated wildfire behaviour in the Iberian Peninsula in recent years.

Climate change is considered to affect wildfire spread both by increasing fuel dryness and by altering vegetation mass and structure. However, the direct effect of global warming on wildfires is hard to quantify due to the multiple non-climatic factors involved in their ignition and spread. By combining wildfire observations with the latest generation of climate models, here we show that more than half of the large wildfires (area>500 ha) occurring in the Iberian Peninsula between 2001 and 2021 present a significant increase in the rate of spread with respect to what it would have been in the pre-industrial period, attributable to global warming.

Spatial and temporal expansion of global wildland fire activity in response to climate change.

Global warming is expected to alter wildfire potential and fire season severity, but the magnitude and location of change is still unclear. Here, we show that climate largely determines present fire-prone regions and their fire season. We categorize these regions according to the climatic characteristics of their fire season into four classes, within general Boreal, Temperate, Tropical and Arid climate zones.