In Europe, Today's Children Will Live Through Nearly Twice as Many Fire Weather Days Than Their Grandparents

Children born in Europe now will live through almost twice as much extreme fire weather as their grandparents (an 84% increase), according to a new study published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters. A child born in Europe in 2025 will live through more than three additional years of extreme fire weather compared with someone born in 1950, the researchers found. The largest increases are projected in the Mediterranean—a region already hard hit by wildfires. There, people born in 2025 are projected to face up to 2.5 times the exposure to extreme fire weather than those born in 1950—the equivalent of over five additional years of extreme fire weather over their lifetime. That’s for a scenario where global warming increases by 2.6°C above pre-industrial temperatures by 2100, as is currently predicted under current global climate and energy policies.To map out potential outcomes, researchers used climate model projections for fire weather known as the Fire Weather Index. Fire weather refers to the hot, dry, and windy conditions that make fires more likely to ignite, spread faster, and become harder to suppress—conditions that are becoming more common due to climate cha...