Europe fires to worsen even if climate goals met

PARIS: Even reaching the most optimistic goals in the Paris climate treaty will still increase the area of southern Europe devastated by forest fires each year by at least 40 per cent, researchers warned on Tuesday.

Following two years of often deadly blazes across Portugal, Spain, southern France and Greece, scientists at the University of Barcelona said more woodland areas could be lost to the flames if the targets laid out in the 2015 climate deal were missed.

The agreement aims to limit global temperature increases to “well below” 2.0 degrees Celsius — and to 1.5C if at all possible.

In the first study of its kind, the team tested computer models of how much worse fires would get if global temperatures were to rise 1.5C, 2C, or 3C by the end of the century.

“It’s relevant because there are a lot of fires in this area, for instance, in Greece this year or last summer in Portugal,” Marco Turco, from the university’s Department of Applied Physics and lead study author said. “These are examples of things to come in the future.”

Turco and the team found that the area of southern Europe lost each year to fire would increase between 40-54 per cent, even if temperature rises were limited to 1.5C — the most ambitious goal in all climate change mitigation efforts.

“1.5C is really ambitious... but it’s not physically impossible,” said Turco.

Were temperatures to climb 2C above the preindustrial benchmark, the area destroyed by fire was projected to increase between 62-87 per cent, and for 3C it could grow by as much as 187 per cent.