Firefighters in France and Spain this week been trying to tame wildfires more ferocious and more erratic than any they’ve tackled before.
Hundreds of thousands of people have had to evacuate their homes because of the fires.
Spain has already seen more than 370 fires this year, compared with 211 in a typical year, while France has seen more than 320 — almost 3.5 times as many as its yearly average of 93 fires. There are still months of wildfire season left.
A rapidly warming climate — Europe is the fastest-warming continent on the planet — and abrupt shifts from wet to dry conditions have contributed to more intense and destructive fire seasons in recent years, particularly in Western and Southern Europe.
These wildfires are not “a succession of isolated events” but “the most painful expression of a climate emergency,” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said.
Here are some of the stories that made headlines over the past week, as well as some photos that caught our eye.
