Human-induced climate change made the fire-prone conditions that have devastated large swathes of Europe up to 20 times more likely, scientists have warned.
Spain and France have been grappling with uncontained blazes that have scorched more than 120,000 hectares of land and forced around 300,000 people to evacuate their homes. The EU activated its emergency response system, sending firefighting aircraft and ground vehicles to tackle the blazes – but warned it was quickly running “out of capacity”.
