The signs of climate change are evident in the extreme fire weather that fueled this week’s destructive wildfires in Spain and France, and have intensified Southern Europe’s fire seasons over the past eight years, according to two newly released studies.

A rapid analysis published Thursday by scientists with World Weather Attribution found that human-driven climate change made the hot, dry conditions behind Spain’s record-breaking blaze 20 times more likely. In France, climate change doubled the probability of the extreme fire weather that fed the flames. The researchers also determined that warming over the past 26 years has tripled the likelihood of severe fire-risk conditions in Spain and raised the risk in France by 40%. The assessment was conducted while the fires were still burning.

On the same day, a separate study — prepared well before the current fires — reported that the number of days with extreme fire-prone weather in Southern Europe has more than doubled compared with past decades.

Both studies focused on shifts in weather patterns that create conditions favorable to wildfires. Their measurements take into account temperature, drought severity, humidity levels and wind speed.

“The shift in fire weather conditions in Spain is extraordinarily strong and stands out as one of the most significant changes I’ve observed,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and coordinator of World Weather Attribution. Spain is experiencing its hottest summer on record, following an unusually wet January that spurred vegetation growth before an intense drought set in — a sequence that increased available fuel for fires, the report explained.

Spain has also faced challenges from rural land abandonment, leaving vegetation unmanaged and vulnerable to drying out, Otto noted. In France’s Bordeaux region, dense pine forests have created additional fire risk because they ignite readily once flames take hold.

World Weather Attribution, an international network of scientists that examines extreme weather events to evaluate the role of climate change, completed its analysis quickly. Although the report has not yet undergone peer review, the team employed well-established scientific methods, and many of its rapid studies are later published in peer-reviewed journals.

Warming world means fires ignite ‘more explosively’

A plane drops fire retardant over forested land near Blagon during wildfires in southwestern France, July 29, 2026.

Otto’s group assessed how the burning of coal, oil and gas has increased the likelihood of fires of this scale. They compared today’s fire weather severity with historical records and with a modeled world that is 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) cooler — roughly the amount of warming that has occurred since pre-industrial times.

“This research aligns with what fire scientists have long understood and adds quantitative evidence,” said Syracuse University fire scientist Jacob Bendix, who was not involved in the studies. “Fires start more easily and spread more aggressively during extreme heat and drought. And for decades we’ve known that climate change is making these conditions more common. The broad pattern of these disasters was, unfortunately, foreseeable.”

The second study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that Southern Europe once experienced roughly 10 days per year with extreme fire weather. That number has now climbed to about 25 days annually, said lead author Raúl Cordero, a climate scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. In addition to becoming more frequent, these extreme days are about 50% more intense than they were between 1981 and 2010.

Fires were decreasing until climate change overwhelmed gains

Burned terrain surrounds buildings after a wildfire in El Tiemblo, in Spain’s Avila province, July 30, 2026.

From the 1980s through 2018, Southern Europe saw a notable decline in both the number of fires and the total area burned, largely due to improved fire prevention, suppression and land management strategies, Cordero said. However, that progress has been rapidly reversed as climate change has intensified fire-conducive weather.

“No matter how many resources are deployed, it becomes nearly impossible to contain a blaze under extremely severe weather conditions,” Cordero explained. “The climate forcing we’re witnessing today is extraordinarily intense.”

John Abatzoglou, a fire scientist at the University of California, Merced, who did not participate in the studies, said the results underscore the immediacy of the crisis. “These findings show that climate change is not a distant threat — it is already shaping the disasters we’re experiencing,” he said.

Otto emphasized the broader implication: “We must stop burning fossil fuels. As long as global temperatures continue to rise, fire-prone weather will become increasingly severe. There are limits to how much societies can adapt to these escalating extremes.”