The fires are raging – but the year of chaos has only just begun

 

Jonathan Jeppsson

 

Dig manager and climate columnist

 

Published 22:07Updated 23:22

The fires raging in France and Spain are unprecedented.

And that's no surprise.

We're only at the beginning of a chaotic climate year.

The bizarre image by photographer Maximilien Lamy will become a classic: Two tourists, a man and a woman, sit relaxed on the beach under a parasol and watch the sky darken from the massive forest fire in Gironde on the other side of the water.

The image is almost too clear, when we know today how tourism accounts for eight percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.

The scenes are apocalyptic: On Friday, the largest fire in the area turned into a kind of firestorm – a phenomenon that has never occurred in the country before, where a fire begins to generate its own winds and thunder.

“Europe stands together with France and Spain,” writes Ursula von der Leyen and promises a handful of firefighting aircraft – five to France and five to Spain.

Anti-cancer pills

It’s like handing out a few pills to a cancer patient. What is really needed is clearly something completely different. But it’s no longer something that neither the President of the European Commission nor any other world leader can promise, now that a little over a decade has passed since the Paris Agreement was signed. The big promises and ambitions are being talked about less and less.

Because things are moving fast now. The future is already here. And five aircraft are not the answer to the challenge we face.

Warming up twice as fast

That there is a link between climate change and the forest fires that are now raging in Spain and France is established, according to Johan Sjöström, a forest fire researcher at the Rise Institute. The forest fires are favored by long droughts, high temperatures and strong winds. These weather phenomena, linked to a changing climate, have increased in scope – and made the fires worse.

Europe has been warming at a much faster rate than the world as a whole: about twice as fast as the global average. Rainfall in the south has increased during the winter months in recent years, which has allowed trees, grass and shrubs to grow. During the dry summer months, they become excellent fuel for a fire. But a changed landscape with fewer grazing animals and more forest is also fueling the fires in southern Europe.

Less to burn

But if you zoom out a little, you see that the picture is complex – over the past 20 years, the total area ravaged by fires in the world has actually decreased.

This is primarily because there is less to burn: savannas are being cultivated, agriculture is expanding and we are actually managing to put out more fires today than before.

But a new report suggests that this reduction appears to be temporary.

Even if warming stays at 1.5 degrees, which currently seems completely unlikely, fires in many forest areas will become bigger, hotter and harder to stop. Even with ambitious climate policies, today's fire-fighting strategies will fail in large parts of the world, the report states.

We are, the researchers conclude, facing a catch-22: We need to plant more forests to limit climate change – but unless future forests are planned based on a greatly increased fire risk, they risk burning up before they have time to function as the carbon sinks on which climate strategies are based.

Major consequences

We are at the beginning of what could very well be a chaotic year.

Unfortunately, the early reports that pointed to a so-called "Super-El Niño" or even a "Godzilla-El Niño" look like they are coming true.

If the forecasts are correct, we will experience the climate phenomenon in a strength never seen before, with major consequences around the world as a result.

There is a risk that the fires currently underway will pale in comparison.