Scientists blame climate change for the deadly wildfires across Europe: Devastating blazes in Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece were made 10 TIMES more likely by global warming

This summer, enormous wildfires swept across Europe, leaving huge swathes of Turkey, , and Cyprus scorched. Now, scientists have blamed for the deadly blazes. According to a study by World Weather Attribution (WWA), the wildfires were made 10 times more likely by global warming. called its findings 'concerning.' 'Our study finds an extremely strong climate change signal towards hotter and drier conditions,' said Theodore Keeping, a researcher at Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College in . 'Today, with 1.3C of warming, we are seeing new extremes in wildfire behaviour that has pushed firefighters to their limit.' Worryingly, the experts say the worst is yet to come. 'We are heading for up to 3C this century unless countries more rapidly transition away from ,' Mr Keeping added. This summer's fires killed 20 people, forced 80,000 to evacuate and burned more than one million hectares (2.47 million acres). According to WWA's analysis, they were 22 per cent more intense this year than last making 2025 Europe's worst recorded year of wildfires. Hundreds of wildfires that broke out in the eastern Mediterranean in June and July were driven by temperatures above 40C (about 104F), extremely dry conditions and strong winds. The study found winter rainfall ahead of the wildfires had dropped by about 14 per cent since the preindustrial era, when a heavy reliance on fossil fuels began. It also determined that because of climate change, weeklong periods of dry, hot air that primes vegetation to burn are now 13 times more likely. In addition, the analysis found an increase in the intensity of highpressure systems that strengthened extreme northerly winds, known as Etesian winds, that fanned the wildfires. Gavriil Xanthopoulos, research director at the Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems of the Hellenic Agricultural Organization in Greece, said firefighters used to be able to wait for such winds to die down to control fires. 'It seems that they cannot count on this pattern anymore,' Xanthopoulos said. More study is needed to understand how the wind patterns are reaching high velocities more often, he said. Flavio Lehner, an assistant professor in Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University who was not involved in the WWA research, said its summary and key figures were consistent with existing literature and his understanding of how climate change is making weather more conducive to wildfire. Climate change is 'loading the dice for more bad wildfire seasons' in the Mediterranean, Lehner said.