Graph: Burnt area in France on July 22 (red line). The maximum value in the period 2006-2025 (grey area) is July 2022 (source: Copernicus).

This month, burnt area in France exceeded the highest value in the past 20 years in July, which was the year of 2022. A recent study showed that in 2022, southwestern France experienced an exceptional wildfire season, recording a burned area 14 times higher than the average in previous decades. 

That study showed that anthropogenic climate change made the extreme wildfire weather conditions in 2022 approximately 2–10 times more likely. Under a moderate scenario of climate change, those weather conditions are projected to become roughly 1 to 2 orders of magnitude more probable by the end of the century.

Source: Zhu et al., 2026. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 26: 2637–2652.