This summer Spain and Portugal were facing one of its most extreme wildfire seasons in two decades. Heatwaves with temperatures above 40°C and moderate winds were fanning the flames. Above we show an example of the aerosol plume measured by TROPOMI on 16 August 2025. The triangles/squares show the fire location and their intensity.
Senior scientist Johannes Kaiser at NILU is one of the contributing scientists. He leads the reports section on vegetation fires.
“In 2024, the global overall trends continued with less fire activity in savannah regions, but more frequent and more intense fire episodes in boreal, forest, and wet land regions. The amount of vegetation burnt in Canada was only second to 2023, and thus extreme for two straight years. South America saw many large fires in the Earth’s largest tropical wetlands in the Pantanal. The Arctic fire season of 2024 was among the five most active fires seasons in the Arctic since 2003. Here in Europe, Portugal and the Balkans were most affected,” he says.
for more details see the the NILU post.
