Parts of Europe have been battling devastating wildfires over recent weeks amid extreme summer heat, which, according to experts, is the result of "widespread, rapid, and intensifying" climate change that can be attributed to human activities and greenhouse gas emissions.

WILDFIRES TORMENTING VARIOUS EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

In France, the violent fire blazing the southern tourist region of Var in past days was brought under control last Monday, after killing two people, devastating 7,000 hectares and forcing the evacuation of over 14,000 residents and tourists.

Some 400 firefighters remain mobilized to treat the edges. It was the biggest wildfire in France this year. Last Monday, many massifs around the French Mediterranean were placed on fire red vigilance.

The local authorities are working on the exact cause of the fire, whose damage is very heavy from an environmental point of view. Local officials said that "it will take between 30 and 40 years" to restore the ecosystem.

In Greece, a new big fire broke out in Vilia, northwest of Athens, where a large blaze has been put out after burning for five days and ravaging swathes of pristine pine forest, according to Greece's fire service.

Greece has been experiencing a wave of violent fires across the country since the beginning of August, totalling about 600, according to the Greek government. At least two volunteers have died and dozens have been injured due to the fires, while thousands have to be evacuated to safer places. The country's firefighting capabilities were stretched to the limit and the government has to appeal for help from abroad.

The fires broke out as Greece experienced the most intense and protracted heat wave in around 30 years, with the temperature in many parts reaching 42 to 45 degrees Celsius and nearly 100,000 hectares of forestry and farmland burned in less than two weeks in Greece, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

In Italy, major wildfires have raged since July in parts of the country ranging from the island region of Sardinia, the dry southern parts of the country, to the most inland part of Lombardy, Italy's most populated region and home to the country's financial and fashion capital of Milan.

The situation remained grim in early August, when flames stretched from the Sicily island in the south, the Abruzzo region in the heart of Italy, to Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy. Southern Italy was hit particularly hard by wildfires, which prompted the Sicilian regional government to declare "a state of crisis and emergency for six months."

According to a report based on EFFIS data and released by Italian green political party Europa Verde(Green Europe), over 150,000 hectares of woods and forests have gone up in smoke in Italy this year, an area equal to Rome, Naples, and Milan put together.

"In Sicily, since the beginning of 2021 alone, over 78,000 hectares have been burned, equal to 3.05 percent of the region's surface. In Sardinia, 20,000 hectares were burned causing the evacuation of hundreds of people," the report says, adding that it will take at least 15 years to rebuild the woods and the Mediterranean scrub destroyed by the flames.

In Spain, the largest wildfire seen in the country so far in 2021 has been put out in the central province of Avila on Aug. 21 after burning around 22,000 hectares of brush, woodland and pasture, officials said.

Helped by temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius and gusting winds, the fire spread so fast that in two days it reached a perimeter of 40 km, leading to the evacuation of around 1,000 people from the municipalities of Solosancho, Sobedillo, Riofrio, Sotalbo and Villaviciosa.

The flames were fought by around 500 firemen, including 150 members of the Military Emergency Unit of the Spanish armed forces, along with the help of five aircraft and two helicopters. Ash particles from the fires fell in some outlying towns in the neighboring Comunidad de Madrid, while the smoke was visible over 120 km away.

REPORT WARNS OF WORSENING CLIMATE CHANGE

In its starkest warning yet, a new landmark report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in early August stressed that climate change is "widespread, rapid, and intensifying." The intense heat in Italy, Spain and North Africa follows an extreme heatwave accompanied by devastating wildfires in Greece and Turkey earlier in the month, the report said.

The report warned that the human-caused climate crisis is "unequivocal" and that temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next 20 years, triggering more extreme weather events worldwide.

According to the report, many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the changes are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.

Experts warned that Europe will need to prepare for the eventuality of further records being broken with temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius being possible in Europe in the future.

"Climate models that we run with scenarios show that these extremes will intensify and get stronger with increasing temperatures," said Gian-Kasper Plattner, one of the report's authors and also senior scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research.

However, there is still time to halt this trend if urgent global action is taken, he added. Enditem