A large wildfire that scorched southern France during the first week of August became the country's largest wildfire of the year. One person died, at least a dozen others were injured, and over 32,000 acres were charred.
This has been an active year for wildfires in France. Just over 91,000 acres have been burned, the third-highest total of the past 20 years, according to Copernicus, the European Union's Earth observation program.
A single blaze, the Corbières Massif fire, is responsible for nearly half of the acres burned so far this year. According to PBS News, close to 2,000 firefighters and a fleet of water bombers were called in to combat the blaze that erupted on Aug. 5.
The Corbières Massif fire was under control five days later, but the devastation it left behind in the villages of the Mediterranean region near Spain's border, where it first sparked, is significant.
"It's a scene of sadness and desolation," the mayor of Jonquières, Jacques Piraux, told BFM TV, according to PBS News. "It looks like a lunar landscape, everything is burned. More than half or three-quarters of the village has burned down. It's hellish."
Hot and dry weather has made conditions conducive to the rapid spread of wildfires in France this summer. The Aude region, where the Corbières Massif fire occurred, has been experiencing drought conditions. A statement from the environment ministry said the rainfall deficit in August "played a major role in the spreading of the fire, since the vegetation is very dry," according to AP News.
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Acting like atmospheric steroids, the heat-trapping gases warming our world are driving stronger and more frequent extreme weather events. Many heat waves and droughts have been supercharged by our overheating planet, stretching out wildfire seasons and making them more active.
A historic late-June to early-July heat wave claimed about 2,300 lives across 12 European cities, and a new study links roughly 1,500 of those deaths, nearly 65%, to our warming world. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London say climate change tripled the toll.
Scientists with World Weather Attribution found our overheating planet made the weather conditions that led to deadly South Korean wildfires in March nearly twice as likely.
"Even in today's climate, that has warmed by 1.3°C due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels, the combination of high temperatures, low humidity and high wind speeds (HDWI) observed over the 5 days following March 22nd, when the fires broke out, was very unusual," concluded researchers with WWA. "In the current climate they are expected on average about once every 300 years."
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The wildfires, the deadliest ever in South Korea with 32 deaths, also left 45 injured and around 37,000 residents displaced.
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