World not ready for wildfires caused by climate change, experts say

PARIS: The world is unprepared for the growing ferocity of wildfires fueled by climate change, scientists say, as fires from North America to Europe welcome the northern hemisphere’s summer , the hottest year on record.

Wildfires have already burned large swathes of Turkey, Canada, Greece and the United States earlier this season, as extreme heatwaves push temperatures to scorching levels.

Although additional resources have been devoted to improving firefighting in recent years, experts say the same is not true for planning and preparing for such disasters.

“We are still catching up,” said Stefan Doerr, director of the Center for Wildfire Research at Swansea University in the United Kingdom.

Predicting how big, where and when a fire will occur can be difficult because many factors, including local weather conditions, factor into the calculations.

But overall, wildfires are growing larger and burning more severely, said Doerr, co-author of a recent paper examining the frequency and intensity of these extreme events.

A separate study published in June found that the frequency and magnitude of extreme wildfires appeared to have doubled over the past 20 years.

By the end of the century, the number of extreme wildfires worldwide is expected to increase by 50%, according to a 2022 report from the United Nations Environment Program.

Doerr said humanity has yet to face this reality.

“We are clearly not sufficiently prepared for the situation we are facing now,” he said.

Climate change is a major factor, although other factors such as land use and the location of housing developments play an important role.

We can’t fight fires
Fires do not respect borders, which is why responses have evolved between governments to face these disasters together, said Jesus San-Miguel, an expert from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

The EU has a strong model for sharing resources, and even countries outside the Mediterranean bloc have benefited from firefighting equipment or financial assistance when needed, San-Miguel said.

But as wildfires become more and more extreme, firefighting simply won’t be a solution.

“We receive feedback from our civil protection colleagues who say: ‘We cannot fight fires. The water evaporates before reaching the ground,'” San-Miguel said.

“Prevention is an area we need to work more on,” he added.

Controlled burns, livestock grazing or mechanized vegetation removal are all effective ways to limit the amount of combustible fuel covering the forest floor, said Rory Hadden of the University of Edinburgh.

Banning campfires and establishing roads as fire breaks can all be effective in reducing departures and minimizing spread, said Hadden, a fire safety and engineering expert.

But such efforts require funding and planning from governments that may have other priorities and cash-strapped budgets, and the return is not always immediately obvious.

“Whatever method or technique you use to manage a landscape, the result of that investment is nothing happens, so it’s a very strange psychological thing. Success is: well, nothing happens happened,” Hadden said.

Short memories
Local organizations and residents often take the initiative to remove vegetation from areas immediately around their homes and communities.

But not everyone is ready to accept that their neighborhood is in danger.

“People don’t think it will happen to them, but it will happen eventually,” San-Miguel said, pointing to historically cold or humid climates, like that of the Pacific Northwest in the United States, which has witnessed major fires in recent years.

Canada has adapted to a new normal of high-latitude wildfires, while some Scandinavian countries are preparing for ever greater fire risk.

But how best to deal with this threat remains an open question, said Guillermo Rein of Imperial College London, even in places where fire has long been a part of the landscape.

Even in places fresh from fire, the clearest lessons are sometimes not applied.

“People have very short memories of wildfires,” said Rein, a fire science expert.

In July 2022, London experienced its worst day of wildfires since the bombings of World War II. Yet at the end of the year, only academics were still talking about how best to prepare for the future.

“While wildfires are happening, everyone has questions. When they go away, after a year, people forget about it,” he said.