The European Union is currently crossing a sad line. Since 2006, the area of natural areas that have burned in EU countries has been monitored. Never before has such a large area of natural areas burned in one year as this year. And we still have more than four months to go. You can find the numbers on the Copernicus website.

It's no surprise that Spain is currently so much in the news. The sad "record" for Spain was around 300,000 hectares. Now we're already a quarter higher, at 382,000 hectares. Portugal was usually at the top – the maximum since 2006 was around 560,000 hectares – and this year's total is almost half that, at 247,000 hectares.

There have also been a surprising number of news reports about wildfires in the UK in recent weeks. There, the 18-year upper limit of 29,000 hectares of burnt natural areas has already been significantly exceeded, reaching a current area of 46,000 hectares. The risk of large wildfires is shifting northward in Europe. Perhaps the current situation in the United Kingdom is a harbinger of this.

Does that upper limit in the Copernicus figures also apply to the situation before 2006? It certainly seems that way. The year 2003 was also extreme, but less so than 2017. So it looks like the European Union is now heading for a sad record.