The area of Europe burned by wildfires each year could almost triple by the end of the century under a high-emissions scenario, but the scale of the increase will depend heavily on how much governments invest in preventing and fighting fires, a new study has found.

The study, “Future Projections of Burned Area in Europe Highlight the Importance of Human Action" published in Global Change Biology on August 20, found that worsening fire weather alone would increase Europe’s annual burned area by about 39% under a low-emissions pathway and by almost 192% under a high-emissions pathway.

Maintaining and improving fire-management capacity could reduce those increases by between 72% and 92%, according to the study led by Maik Billing of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, with Thomas Hickler and Kirsten Thonicke as joint senior authors.

Even with improved fire management, however, wildfire activity would still increase in about 55% of Europe’s fire-prone regions under strong warming.

The findings are particularly significant for Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe, where the models used in the study diverge most sharply and where demographic and land-use changes could complicate efforts to contain rising fire risks.

Two models produce different futures

The researchers used two fire models within the same vegetation model, producing markedly different projections.

SPITFIRE, a process-based model that calculates fire behaviour using factors including fuel moisture and wind, projects a steady increase in Europe’s annual burned area. From about 1.8mn hectares at the beginning of the century, it rises to around 2.6mn hectares under the low-emissions scenario and 5.3mn hectares under the high-emissions scenario by 2100.

BASE, an empirical model calibrated against European fire data, produces a very different result. It projects burned area declining until around mid-century under both scenarios. Under the high-emissions pathway, it then increases again towards 2100 but ends the century at roughly its starting level.

The principal reason for the difference is the way BASE accounts for human development.

When the researchers held the Human Development Index at its 2000 level, BASE generated results close to those of SPITFIRE. Allowing development to rise substantially reduced projected burned area, cutting the increase by about 92% under low emissions and 72% under high emissions.

The study does not treat HDI as a direct measure of firefighting performance. Rather, it uses development as a proxy for the capacity to invest in wildfire prevention, detection and suppression.

Whether governments actually make those investments is a political decision, and even well-prepared systems can be overwhelmed by extreme conditions.

Spain’s 2025 wildfire season illustrated that limitation. The country burned almost 400,000 hectares despite extensive preparedness, showing that extreme fire weather can eventually exceed suppression capacity.

Southern Romania emerges as an unexpected hotspot

The Wallachian Plain in southern Romania is one of the areas where the two models point towards greater fire risk even under relatively moderate climate change.

SPITFIRE projects burned area increases of between 200% and 300% in parts of the Wallachian Plain under the low-emissions scenario. It also identifies the Pyrenees and isolated areas of Central Europe as hotspots.

At the same time, it projects relatively small changes or declines in parts of Greece, the western Balkans and much of the Iberian peninsula.

BASE generally produces declining burned area under the low-emissions pathway but also identifies parts of the Wallachian Plain as areas where fire activity could increase. 

The explanation lies partly in changes in land use rather than weather. When the researchers hold land use constant, the projected increases in southern Spain and the Romanian plain largely disappear. Agricultural abandonment allows previously cultivated areas to be colonised by early-successional vegetation, particularly grasses and other fine fuels that can burn readily. That creates a potential conflict between environmental policies.

The low-emissions pathway assumes that agricultural land is increasingly returned to nature as part of broader environmental and climate objectives. In parts of Romania and the Balkans, however, that transition can create landscapes more conducive to fire unless abandoned land is actively managed.

Under the high-emissions scenario, SPITFIRE projects increases of 200% to 300% or more across large parts of Southern and Central Europe. Fire hotspots become concentrated in foothills and medium-elevation areas, including the Alps, Pyrenees, Massif Central, Sierra Nevada, Carpathians and Balkan and Scandinavian mountain ranges.

The model also projects recurrent fire regimes emerging in areas that currently experience relatively little wildfire, including western Germany and the Netherlands.

Population decline could add to the risk

One of the study’s more difficult findings for Central and Eastern Europe concerns population density.

SPITFIRE estimates that the probability of a human-caused ignition peaks at a population density of around 14 people per square kilometre. At very low densities there are fewer people available to cause ignitions, while at higher densities fragmented landscapes, faster detection and more intensive land management can limit the spread of fires.

Much of Central Europe is currently above that level but is projected to move towards it as populations decline. Central and Eastern Europe is emptying - the world is running out of mothers and nowhere faster than here - and the same rural depopulation that closes schools and hospitals is, on this model, moving the countryside towards its most fire-prone population density at the same time as it abandons the farmland.

The model therefore suggests that depopulation could initially increase fire risk in parts of the region, as fewer people maintain agricultural land and landscapes become more continuous while remaining sufficiently populated for human ignitions to occur.

The opposite effect is projected in Northern Europe and parts of the British Isles, where population densities are already below the estimated ignition peak. Further depopulation there would tend to reduce the number of human-caused fires.

For Central and Eastern Europe, the combination of population decline and agricultural abandonment could therefore create a particularly difficult fire-management problem.

The researchers caution against treating the relationship as universal. A single global parameterisation of human ignition probability cannot capture the different social and land-use conditions found across Europe, they say.

They suggest that BASE’s regionally calibrated treatment of human influence may provide a more realistic picture.

Rising development offers some protection

Eastern Europe nevertheless produces one of the study’s more encouraging findings.

Under the low-emissions scenario, rising development and the resulting increase in fire-management capacity produce substantial reductions in projected burned area. Under the high-emissions pathway, the improvement in management could in some parts of Eastern Europe be sufficient to offset the deterioration in fire weather.

BASE projects some of its strongest reductions in burned area in the region under both scenarios.

But that outcome assumes that rising incomes translate into sustained public investment in fire prevention and suppression.

The relationship could be disrupted by economic crises, war or competing demands on public finances. The researchers note that their scenarios assume relatively smooth economic development and may therefore understate the effect of unexpected disruptions.

That is a significant caveat for Central and Southeast Europe, where governments are simultaneously increasing defence spending and facing pressure on already constrained public finances.

The study also highlights a broader uncertainty: the two fire models show their weakest agreement in Central and Eastern Europe under strong warming. The authors therefore say projections for the region should be treated with greater caution than those for the Mediterranean.

Climate is already testing the system

The findings come as Europe is emerging from an exceptional sequence of wildfire seasons.

Europe has just come through the worst run of fire seasons on record, and the region has been in it. Europe faced a record wildfire season in 2025 after a 2024 that was already worse than average, and 2024 itself saw Ukraine and the Balkans ravaged by fires.

Under moderate warming, the results of the study suggest, continued improvements in fire management could absorb much of the additional pressure from worsening fire weather across most of Europe. Under stronger warming, however, that protection becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

The implications extend beyond fire services. Wildfires arrive alongside heatwaves, droughts and floods, putting pressure on the same public budgets and emergency-response systems. The EU's own crisis reserves have already been depleted by climate-related emergencies, and the fires arrive alongside everything else in the disaster season - the heatwaves, droughts and floods that hit the same budgets in the same months.

The study therefore points to a narrowing gap between what governments can control and what climate change can overwhelm. Better fire management can substantially limit the consequences of worsening fire weather, the researchers conclude, but it may not be enough to offset the effects of strong climate change.