Exacerbated fires in Mediterranean Europe due to anthropogenic warming projected with non-stationary climate-fire models

The observed trend towards warmer and drier conditions in southern Europe is projected to continue in the next decades, possibly leading to increased risk of large fires. However, an assessment of climate change impacts on fires at and above the 1.5 degrees C Paris target is still missing. Here, we estimate future summer burned area in Mediterranean Europe under 1.5, 2, and 3 degrees C global warming scenarios, accounting for possible modifications of climate-fire relationships under changed climatic conditions owing to productivity alterations. We found that such modifications could be beneficial, roughly halving the fire-intensifying signals. In any case, the burned area is robustly projected to increase. The higher the warming level is, the larger is the increase of burned area, ranging from similar to 40% to similar to 100% across the scenarios. Our results indicate that significant benefits would be obtained if warming were limited to well below 2 degrees C.