RT Journal Article
T1 Climate change aggravated wildfire behaviour in the Iberian Peninsula in recent years
A1 Senande Rivera, Martín
A1 Insua Costa, Damián
A1 Míguez Macho, Gonzalo
AB Climate change is considered to affect wildfire spread both by increasing fuel dryness and by altering vegetation mass and structure. However, the direct effect of global warming on wildfires is hard to quantify due to the multiple non-climatic factors involved in their ignition and spread. By combining wildfire observations with the latest generation of climate models, here we show that more than half of the large wildfires (area>500 ha) occurring in the Iberian Peninsula between 2001 and 2021 present a significant increase in the rate of spread with respect to what it would have been in the pre-industrial period, attributable to global warming. The average acceleration of the rate of spread due to increased fuel dryness is between 2.0% and 8.3%, whereas the influence of enhanced vegetation growth since the pre-industrial period could potentially be even higher than the direct impact of temperature increase in fuel conditions.
PB Nature Research
YR 2025
FD 2025
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/40988
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/40988
LA eng
NO Senande-Rivera, M., Insua-Costa, D. & Miguez-Macho, G. Climate change aggravated wildfire behaviour in the Iberian Peninsula in recent years. npj Clim Atmos Sci 8, 19 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-025-00906-3
NO Funding comes from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation RIESPIRO (PID2021-128510OB-100) and the CRETUS strategic partnership (AGRUP2015/02), co-funded by the European Union ERDF. This work was supported by the project ‘Climate and Wildfire Interface Study for Europe (CHASE)’ under the 6th Seed Funding Call by the European University for Well-Being (EUniWell). MSR acknowledges Xunta de Galicia for a predoctoral grant (Programa de apoio á etapa predoutoral 2019, ED481A-2019/112). DIC acknowledges support from the European Research Council (HEAT, 101088405). Computation took place at CESGA (Centro de Supercomputacion de Galicia), Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain.
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026