Paris (AFP) - Although the fire season is not over yet, the initial toll of fires is worsening in the European Union, with fires burning more than 660,000 hectares since January, a record number for this period of the year since records began. Satellite data in the year 2006.

Since the beginning of January, fires have destroyed 662,776 hectares of forests in the European Union, according to data updated Sunday by the European Information System on Forest Fires , which has been keeping comparable statistics since 2006 thanks to satellite imagery of the European Copernicus programme.

France experienced worse years in the 1970s, before the consolidated European data. But 2022 is the most dangerous year in 16 years according to these numbers, largely because of two back-to-back major fires in the Gironde, in the southwest of the country, where German, Polish and Austrian firefighters arrived this week to provide firefighting support.

The situation is also exceptional in Central Europe , where it took firefighters more than ten days in July to control the largest blaze in Slovenia's modern history, with the help of residents who mobilized themselves so much that the government had to ask residents to stop donating to the firefighters.

And Slovenia, which does not have aircraft specialized in fighting fire, requested the help of Croatia, which sent a plane ... before retrieving it to extinguish its own fires. The Slovenian government is considering buying its first sea bomber.

In the German capital, Berlin, a large fire broke out last week from a police ammunition depot in a drought-stricken forest, and it was quickly brought under control. Until now, the capital has been spared from such fires, but it is increasingly threatened due to its vast forested areas.

But the region hardest hit by the fires is the Iberian Peninsula. Spain, which was dominated by drought like France due to several heat waves this summer, witnessed the destruction of 245,278 hectares as a result of fires, especially in Galicia in the northwest. However, the situation improved as the temperatures dropped.

Likewise, Portugal has been fighting a fire for more than a week in the global geological reserve recognized by UNESCO in the Serra da Estrela mountain area, which has a peak height of about two thousand meters.

Spain records the largest area of burned land, followed by Romania (150,528 hectares), Portugal (75,277 hectares) and France (61,289 hectares).

"2022 is already a record year" when it comes to the summer period alone, Jesus San Miguel, coordinator of the European Forest Fire Information System, told AFP. The previous record in Europe dates back to 2017, when fires destroyed 420,913 hectares on August 13, and 988,087 hectares in one year.

"I hope we will not see a month like October of that year," when 400,000 hectares were destroyed across Europe in one month, he added.

What contributes to the outbreak of fires is the exceptional drought in Europe, in addition to heat waves.

Extremely dry conditions were often observed in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, but Jesús San Miguel noted that "this is exactly what happened in Central Europe" which had hitherto been untouched by these weather phenomena.

For example, the Czech Republic experienced a fire that destroyed more than 1,000 hectares, which is small compared to other countries, but 158 times higher than the average between 2006 and 2021 when fires were negligible.

In Central Europe, the areas burned are still small compared to tens of thousands of hectares in Spain, France or Portugal. Besides the fires in Croatia, there were only three fires in Slovenia and five in Austria. However, the continuation of global warming in Europe as a whole will contribute to the escalation of this trend.