This data shows the number of large-scale fires across Europe

Aug 12, 2021

With the collaboration of Statista.

Firefighters try to extinguish a fire in the village of Avgaria, on the island of Evia, Greece, August 10, 2021.

Fires rage across Greece, Italy and Turkey. Image: REUTERS/Stelios Misinas

Felix Richter

Data Journalist, Statista

The deadly combination of extreme heat and drought has resulted in wildfires across Southern Europe, leaving thousands without homes.
Temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius turned bone-dry forests into tinderboxes.
As of August 10, roughly 2.5 times the annual average number of wildfires had already blazed in Europe, according to the EFFIS.

Stoked by extreme heat and drought, huge wildfires are currently raging across Southern Europe, forcing thousands of people to abandon their homes and destroying vast stretches of forestland. Turkey, Greece and Italy have been hit particularly hard by the fires, as an extreme heatwave with temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) turned bone-dry forests into tinderboxes.

Have you read?

And while the fires that have been ravaging Southern Europe for the past two weeks are by far the most devastating ones, accounting for 60 percent of total area burned this year, 2021 had already been an extreme year for wildfires across the continent before the latest blazes. According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, the number of large scale fires (30 hectares and upwards) registered in Europe had already surpassed the average annual total for 2008-2020 by early July, before the latest outbreaks.

Discover

What’s the World Economic Forum doing about climate change?

As of August 10, the EFFIS registered 1,877 fires across the EU 27 and 11 European non-EU members this year, burning more than 600,000 hectares. That’s roughly 2.5 times the annual average for the the period from 2008-2020, both in terms of the number of fires and the total damage.

wildfires climate change environment global warming nature natural disaster greenhouse gases

This chart shows how wildfire frequency is increasing every year in Europe. Image: European Forest Fire Information System

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.