Firefighters across southern Europe and northern Africa have been battling intense wildfires this week as areas across the region have experienced record-setting temperature spikes.
Wildfires have cropped up in Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, Turkey, and Morocco over the past week, forcing thousands of people to evacuate and destroying thousands of acres of forest along with homes and buildings. The unusually intense (and early) beginning of the European fire season comes after the continent experienced a hot and very dry spring, and while the region is currently experiencing extreme heatwaves for the second time this summer.
“The [European] heatwave has been made more likely due to climate change,” Mark McCarthy at the UK Met Office told the Financial Times.
