![\"man](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_ADDITION-APTOPIX-Greece-Wildfires-25225614524291.jpg\")
Olsjen Mucobega, 32, from Albania who lives in Greece, carries a sheep on the motorcycle during a wildfire in Patras city, western Greece, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (Image: AP)<\/p>\nThe European Union has seen more than one million hectares scorched by wildfires for the first time in 2025 since records began in 1996, according to official dataOlsjen Mucobega, 32, from Albania who lives in Greece, carries a sheep on the motorcycle during a wildfire in Patras city, western Greece, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (Image: AP)<\/p>\n
Wildfires have torched more than one million hectares across countries in the European Union<\/a> this year, making 2025 the worst on record.<\/p>\n The data shows records have also been broken for the amount of Co2 and other air pollutants entering the atmosphere, a full month before the fire season ends. So far this summer deadly infernos<\/a> have emptied out villages and forced farmers to become firefighters, engulfing four times as much land this year as the average for the same period over the past two decades, according to official data.<\/p>\n The European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which goes back to 2003, shows 1,015,024 hectares have burned this year \u2013 breaking the previous record of 988,544 hectares that was set in 2017, with weeks of dangerous fire weather<\/a> still to come.<\/p>\n The destructive blazes have also pumped out 37m tonnes of carbon dioxide \u2013 about as much as the yearly CO2 emissions of Portugal or Sweden, each home to 10 million people. The fires have also broken records for this time of year for nine other air pollutants, including fine particulates known as PM2.5 that experts say make wildfires far more deadly than previously thought.<\/p>\n Cristina Sant\u00edn Nu\u00f1o, a fire scientist at the Spanish National Research Council, said the \u201cperfect conditions\u201d for big and dangerous wildfires were happening more and more because of changes in the climate and how people used the land. \u201cIt is sad and scary \u2013 my home region is burning right now \u2013 but not surprising, really,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Wildfires ripped through swathes of southern Europe this month as a heatwave<\/a> pushed temperatures above 40C across much of the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The flames are known to have killed more than a dozen people but scientists say the hidden death toll is likely to be far greater.<\/p>\n A study published in the Lancet in December blamed wildfire smoke for 111,000 deaths a year in Europe, including Russia<\/a>, between 2000 and 2019. On Tuesday, the EU\u2019s Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service found that \u201cunprecedented\u201d fire activity this year had driven Spain\u2019s wildfire emissions up to the highest annual total in the 23 years since records began.<\/p>\n![\"wildfire\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_SPAIN-WILDFIRE-WEATHER-CLIMATE.jpg\")
Smoke and flames rise from a wildfire in Arnado, Leon province, northwestern Spain, on August 20, (Image: AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"wildfire\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_TOPSHOT-FRANCE-FIRE-ENVIRONMENT.jpg\")
This aerial view shows a road which runs through scorched land following wildfires, near the village of Jonquieres, in the Aude department of southern France, on August 18, 2025.(Image: AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
![\"wildfire\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/0_Forest-fire-in-Turkiyes-Izmir.jpg\")
Turkish General Directorate of Forestry teams, firefighters and Turkish Gendarmerie teams respond to the blaze that spread from a minibus to a nearby forested area in the Buca district of Izmir, Turkiye on August 13, 2025, (Image: Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n