‘Conducive’ conditions up wildfire challenge

Soaring summer temperatures and very low rainfall levels have made forests much more combustible, multiple studies on the impact of climate change have shown, with forests on the outskirts of towns and cities being particularly vulnerable, just as they are particularly valuable. A report, therefore, published by the National Observatory of Athens’ (NOA) Meteo meteorological service last week indicating that 37% of Attica’s forestland has been razed by wildfires in the past eight years, came like a punch to the stomach.

“Forest fires have acquired new characteristics in the age of climate change,” Theodore Giannaros, a pyrometeorologist at the NOA and a member of the Flame Project, tells Kathimerini in the wake of the devastating wildfires that hit the Greek capital last week.

“To begin with, the environment is much more conducive: High temperatures and protracted drought have created more combustible matter, both in terms of the tinder – that is dead matter on the ground that helps spark a fire – and the living matter that contributes to its growth as it burns through dense vegetation. This leads to a high thermal load that makes these fires hard to contain, but which also accelerates the speed at which they spread,” Giannaros adds.

Another new characteristic that experts have observed, and which was evident in the recent wildfires that erupted on August 11 in the East Attica town of Varnavas, is that nightfall does not make battling these blazes any easier. “The intensity of the fire usually used to drop at night, giving the firefighting services a chance to contain the blaze,” explains Giannaros.

“What we have been seeing, on a global scale, is that the thermal intensity now tends to increase overnight or stay at a similar level as during the day. This is a key development for the Fire Service, because, among other problems, it means that its forces come under a lot more strain from the difficult nighttime conditions,” he adds.

All-year threat

The danger of a fire breaking out in forestland is ever apparent in the current climatic conditions that Greece is experiencing. For starters, forest fires are no longer seasonal. The official “fire season” from May 1 to October 31 no longer accounts for the kind of blazes we have already seen in April and November. The extension of the season also contributes to the strain on the country’s firefighting forces. And this isn’t all: Wildfires are also becoming more diverse geographically too.

“Another effect of climate change is fires at high altitudes and forested mountain ecosystems that had not been regarded as vulnerable until now,” says Giannaros, pointing to the blaze on Mount Paiko in Central Macedonia in July as a case in point. “It started in the middle of the night! And what will happen when we start having more fires at altitudes of 1,500-1,600 meters?” he asks. Indeed, a fire on Mount Orvilos in Serres has been burning for nearly a month.

The rising frequency and intensity of forest fires has been the subject of myriad scientific studies that have been warning of the risk for some years now. Indeed, a 2022 international study headed by the University of Barcelona, with the contribution of researchers from the NOA, spoke of an “unprecedented change in the fire regime in Europe which is related to climate change.”

The study detected “summer and spring seasons with unprecedented values of fire risks over the last years, so many areas of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean are reaching extreme conditions conducive to fires. These adverse conditions are becoming more frequent due to the increasing heatwaves and hydrological droughts.”

“This increase in extreme fire risk is quite recent and at critical times it exceeds the firefighting capabilities of European societies, causing higher CO2 emissions associated with fire in extremely hot and dry summers,” notes Jofre Carnicer, first author of the study and member of the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the UB.

The researchers studied the period from 1980 onward and were also able to make certain predictions based on different climate scenarios. According to their findings, the fire risk has been on a fast and steady rise, despite a stabilization and even decrease in the scope of wildfire destruction in many parts of the Mediterranean in the 1950-2000 period.

‘My thoughts after last summer’s terrible heatwave in July were that we couldn’t possibly experience something similar the following year, yet here we are,’ says Kostas Lagouvardos

Greek study

A study on the resilience of Greek forests to climate change carried out by the Athens Academy in cooperation with numerous Greek experts made similar alarming findings, noting that the combination of extreme heat and low rainfall has been present in every year that the country experienced devastating fires. The big problem, according to experts, is that the future bodes even hotter and drier conditions, meaning a longer fire season for areas like the eastern mainland, Peloponnese, Attica and central and southern Crete.

“The trend so far tells us that this summer will be the hottest Greece has experienced since records began. The country has been in a hot box for the past two and a half months, and that is unprecedented. Temperatures during the day but also at night, and especially in cities, have been and remain at exhaustingly high levels. For over 57 of the 61 days comprising June and July, temperatures were above, often way above, the levels recorded in 1991-2020 and the trend appears to be persisting through August too. Likewise, we’ve had several months since July 2023 when the temperatures have been above average,” explains Kostas Lagouvardos, the head of research at the NOA and scientific supervisor of Meteo.

“The trend of elevated temperatures has persisted since the winter. Of the 213 days between January 1 and July 31, 173 were warmer than what we would describe as normal for the season, compared to previous year. The most alarming thing is that the number of warm years has risen this decade, as has the number of very hot summers,” Lagouvardos adds.

According to data from Meteo, the summers of 2023, 2021 and 2012 were the hottest on record and 2024 looks poised to top their performance.

“My thoughts after last summer’s terrible heatwave in July were that we couldn’t possibly experience something similar the following year, yet here we are, in a year of extreme heat, not with the very high levels of the 2023 or the 2021 heatwaves, but with a much longer, almost constant duration,” the expert notes.

What does the future hold in store? “It’s impossible to be certain about every specific year, but the trend toward elevated temperatures is abundantly clear. It has also been noted in climate models, which are being improved and confirmed. Indeed, we have seen the frequency of extreme heat events increase in recent years, with various new records being set,” Lagouvardos adds.

Another key factor in this dismal situation is the precipitous decline in rainfall and the increase in drought phenomena.

“June is a month where Greece usually gets some rain, not a lot, but some. There was practically none this year. Athens, Livadia and Sparta didn’t even get a drop. Arta, which is in western Greece, got just a centimeter, which is nothing given that the 2007-2023 average was 43 centimeters. Orestiada got only three of its usual 53 centimeters and Pertouli 17 of 71 centimeters. Attica, meanwhile, got a single day of rain all summer so far,” notes Lagouvardos.

What this combination of high temperatures and little humidity in the ground resulted in was 18 big forest fires in the month of June alone, which burned some 7,800 hectares of land, which is five times above the 2010-2024 averages recorded by the NOA’s Beyond team.

Europe’s Copernicus center also noted that the expanse of burnt land and CO2 emissions from forest fires were elevated compared to the averages of previous years.

Preparedness is key

All of these factors were at play to a significant extent in the big wildfire that started in Varnavas on August 11. According to the NOA’s Flame team, the ground was very dry and there was a lot of combustible material lying around, there was little humidity in the air and winds were blowing at 65-70 kilometers per hour, with gusts of up to 85 kmph.

“The conditions were tough but they were not extreme. There were moments when the blaze could have been contained so that it did not enter the urban fabric,” Giannaros told Kathimerini after a preliminary study of the data.

“We will likely come across very similar conditions to those of August 11 and 12 in the future, as we have come across them in the past. This is why we need to be properly prepared,” adds Lagouvardos.

The climate crisis should not serve as an alibi for everything that has not been done, but as an additional reason to make sure they happen.