Portuguese and Spanish researchers predict a very bleak picture for the green zones of the Iberian Peninsula.
The results of a joint study, published in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, reveal a strong relationship between climate change, including global warming and its effect on fire patterns recorded between 1981 and 2005 in the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal recorded the largest burnted areas in 2003 and 2005, while Spain, especially Galicia, reached this peak in 2006.
The causes of these fires are in large due to human error, but the weather factors and the growing threat posed by global warming also contribute to the occurrence of forest fires. This new study by Portuguese and Spanish researchers has used several climate models to quantify the burnt areas in different climate change scenarios that may occur during the twenty-first century. One of the alarming scenarios that the researchers concluded is that until 2075, the burnt areas in the Iberian Peninsula will have tripled compared with the average of the current burnt areas. However, in the regions to the north of Portugal and Spain the situation is not as onerous, but still the areas destroyed by fire will double.
