French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time
france24.com
france24.com
> “What is happening right now is extremely, extremely unusual. Seeing a cloud this massive and reaching such an altitude above a wildfire is exceptionally rare,” the researcher explains.
“During the Pedrógão fire [which claimed around 60 lives in Portugal in 2017], there were two episodes of fire-induced thunderstorms. Here, we are already at eight or ten, and the forecast is not encouraging at all.”
Although unprecedented in both intensity and frequency, the phenomenon has been observed in France before, according to the expert: during the Fontainebleau wildfire (Seine-et-Marne) in July, the Ribaute fire (Aude) in 2025, and the Générac fire (Gard) in 2019.
It seems that this cloud and the attached storms have been seen before, even recently, in France, but this one is one of a kind for intensity, by far.
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2026/07/27/le-pyrocum...
But the really salient observation is how people individually and their social system as a whole react (or not).
Debating the shapes of clouds points to a fundamental dysfunctional disconnect on multiple levels.
No, it points to the HN community exhibiting the exact kind of neurodiversity that would be expected here. Specifically: an ability to compartmentalize, and to take interest in trying to be accurate about something less consequential, purely for accuracy's sake.
I don't think we have the data that proves this theory (which of course doesn't mean that the theory is wrong), because the vast majority of these fires are man-made, not natural disasters.
This year's Fontainebleau wildfires were caused by 1) a deranged person ligthning bushes and drenching them with fuel 2) a simple minded person throwing a cigaret but in bushes during a heat wave...
The huge wildfire in the south some years ago was caused by a similarly simple minded dude that caried his alight barbecue from one place to another on the back of his pickup truck (creating a dozen wildfires in the process along the road).
Two of the large recent fires in the Landes region, including the most recent, have started from poorly maintained, spontaneously igniting cars. Those also have not suddenly started appearing out of nowhere.
The common thread is very dry forests, it just takes a spark for disaster.
The fundamental connection increase of CO2 => increase in mean temperature => increase in frequency of high-energy atmospheric events is entirely obvious and well established.
CO2 traps heat and heat is energy. Firestorms are an immediate consequence of that and accordingly rise in frequency as well.
The idea, such fires would be "preventable, since due to individual human action" is patently absurd even in principle. You cannot easily ignite a forest that isn't dried out. An easily ignitable forest on the other hand just waits for the first spark, no matter the source. The hotter climate provides more sparks in the form of lightning. At some point, ignition is virtually guaranteed. And that point is reached already.
Well then prove me wrong...
The BDIFF publishes data of close to 30 years of wildfires reports.
If you plot the number of wildfire occurrences per year, you will see a decreasing curve up to 2010, then a constant rise onward, forming a U shape. I don't think you will find any correlation with global warming data there.
If you plot a pie chart of investigated wildfire causes, you will see the top cause being "criminal" at 35% of investigated occurrences, followed by "Involontary individual" (the simple minded guy with his cigaret but) at 25%, and "Involontary work" at 15%.
Now let me repeat again, I'm not saying that CC does not play a role in this story (not sure why I bother since it does not seem like people really try to understand the comments anymore), what I'm saying is that data does not really exhibit any obvious correlation between the two, and would suggest that even if CC is a factor, then other factors would seem to have a much greater impact.
Said impacting factors are not hard to find btw, and top is: investments in prevention and detection (which positively correlates with French BDIFF data FYI), and addition of stoppers and lay-lines in man made forests (yes, because the majority of French forests are not natural but man shaped as huge lumps of uninterrupted tree)
All the lightning in the world isn't going to burn down a rainforest.
[edited out things that were badly worded]
Wildfires being incited by arsonists don't contradict climate effects, neither would an increase in arson.
But it's important to point out arson instead of ignoring it, even more so when the situation is dangerous. Agreed.
It's just also important to do research on the environment that sustains our lives, no matter how many know-it-alls tell you that the sweet fountain of fossil fuels will enlighten us forever, no matter how wasteful and corrupt we are in distributing its yield.
Instead, why not, for example, show the model of what would have happened to the fire if the current weather in the region had been a couple of degrees cooler? (I mean, it's not as if we can even do a ceteris paribus comparison to the stats on wildfires from pre-industrial times; there is way too much ceteris to paribize.)
I question what is the value or helpfulness of continuing to doubt scientifically proven facts. The summer heatwaves and other natural disasters have increased enough in my lifetime to witness it, but even if that wasn't the case,
I consider dismissing widely accepted scientific results using words like "simple-minded" as pretty much the definition of snark.
As a reflection on my original comment (I depend on fossil fuels myself, like we all do):
Of course, shortening the reasoning enough, attributing any weather event to climate change, or even the climate alone, is impossible. I don't like beligerent simplifications myself. But that's why the quoted sentence in the original comment is about frequency, not just this particular wildfire season. At least that's what I thought.
The mechanisms of the short-term disruption of the Earth's climate due to greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction are more and more well-understood, as far as I know, though.
All reports that I read have phrasing that states the problems of climate attribution carefully, often including a paragraph about the importance of wildfires for the natural cycle.
In my opinion, claiming that not dedicating the problems of climate attribution at least 3 paragraphs in every report on a natural disaster that mentions climate change, is short-sighted (to use a different word).
In statistics, you can always play devil's advocate.
If Europe would be covered in ice in 50 years, there would probably still be someone claiming "see, there's no such thing as global warming!"
I explicitly mentioned arson as relevant to balance my point, but my patience ran out at some point. It is important.
And climate change is at least as important.
I don't read attempts at attributing natural disasters to climate change as "direct" or "simple-minded". I think the science has surpassed this point about 50 yrs ago.
Have a nice day. I tried to edit out snark and hate it every time I get into such a discussion at all. But I also am at least irritated by climate-denialism (or feel a tendency towards it).
It's a terrible word, there should be a better one, but I don't think "climate science skeptics" cuts it...
I get into such discussions too often because I see us depending on fossil fuels, for the foreseeable future. As well as on water, housing, food, etc.
Related: Dust Bowl, a good, recent enough example of man-made large changes causing (albeit local) climate change. If I'm not mistaken. Fascinating topic.
A part of the Fontainebleau forest, much more north, no pine trees, went in smoke earlier. Forests are burning near Madrid.
It may make some people feel better to think that it is an isolated, local problem, but unfortunately global warming is the main culprit and we at least need to acknowledge it.
Article explaining when pine tree forest resist well or not to fire. https://www.sudouest.fr/faits-divers/incendies/incendies-en-...
I know global warming plays a major role in this, but I still found it interesting to know why this fire seems so bad.
Still, I believe it is important to highlight the elephant in the room first.
For example to your point: "I still found it interesting to kmow why this fire seems so bad compared to [...] before", I think it is important to state: "because global warming is getting worse over time". Not because pine trees, which have been around for a long time, and have never burned so badly.
It so happens that the current fire near Bordeaux is roughy in the same area as the historic fire of 1949 in which 82 people died (and currently still smaller, hopefully it will stay that way) [1], as someone else already mentioned.
Wildfires in Fontainebleau are not new, either, even if this year's one it is historically large. First laws against fires in the in forest and obligation of inhabitants to help in case of fire date from the 14th century [2].
Yes warming trends do not help and increase risk (hence need to invest in equipment and prevention) but there is also fabricated drama and lack of perspective, which are unfortunately how everything is reported nowadays.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendie_de_1949_dans_la_for%C...
[2] https://www.fontainebleau-photo.fr/2013/08/les-incendies-de-...
Even the criminal ones are only enabled because of the dry vegetation, caused by the recent heat waves. IMO focusing on what caused the spark is missing the root cause: global warming.
And yes you can argue that such fires existed previously, but what's concerning is that the frequency on which they are happening is increasing rapidly
[0]https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/les-causes-des-inc...
Understatement of the year, here, after the third heatwave of the year with a fourth on the way and record after record being shattered.
>(hence need to invest in equipment)
Easy.
>fabricated drama and lack of perspective
The one with a lack of perspective is not the ones you think.
Are you sure?
Basically they had no way to fight those fires at the time, as the article explains.
Landes & Médoc serve as an immediate example of the consequences of that catastrophe being left to unfold unabated.
Using diminutive terms to describe causalities that currently escalate beyond human control and ultimately lead to civilizational collapse with billions of deaths is a dysfunctional disconnect from reality.
Many of those pine forests are relatively new. Pine trees burn frequently, around every 20-30 years. In the past they used to be mixed with many other original trees, but during the recent century reforestation, pines were planted as the single tree species, making fires more prone to happen and more easily to spread.
In the past, way more population lived next to the forests, where lumber used to be part of their income, so trees were frequently cut, forests maintained and shepherds would bring their sheep to feed from forest lower plants. All of that is gone.
In the past, locals used to be able to build firewalls, clean forests and fight fire with fire (provoking small controlled wildfires to stop the big ones). Green policies forbid those actions nowadays.
Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%.
This was the hottest year on record. 10 of the last 15 years have been the hottest year on record, consecutively. What makes you believe this fake information about the middle ages?
From planting to cutting is only around 30-50 years. With multiple thinnings in between. Also none of that forest existed 200 years ago and there never was anything other than pine planted there for those 200 years, in the beginning for resin, now for pulp.
And so none of it burned in the middle ages or was affected by any higher temperatures because it didn't exist back then.
The chart I'm looking at (1980-2020):
- https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/maps-and-charts/burnt-...
This one starts in the 00s but goes to 2024, and also shows a decrease:
- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-area-burnt-by-wild...
Do you have the data that goes as far back as 80 years ago though?
"You’re both right. However OPs post is more useful than yours.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change"
Thank you for proving that there are, in fact, still climate change deniers even here on hacker news.
I'm assuming you're a climate change denier. You don't say so outright, but "Green policies forbid those actions nowadays" is a bit of a dogwhistle that you oppose environmental protection regulations broadly (not merely overzealous ones that have side-effects that make combating certain types of wildfires harder in certain situations), and:
"Also, if we talk about past centuries, temperatures used to be higher during early middle age and before. These high temperatures are nothing new in terms of historical forest.
Also, looking at the statistics, we’re probably at the bottom number of wildfires per area in the last 70-80 years, while total forest mass has probably increased around 40-50%."
Well... that's pretty close to just coming out and saying you don't believe in climate science.
This truly is the least intelligent timeline.
There have been 4 or 5 pretty massive wildfires in France that I can remember in the last 5 years, but this is the first time they've had to deal with pyrocumulonimbus caused by a wildfire. Global warming was likely a contributing factor for all of those fires, but global warming alone doesn't explain why this one is different. The first comment about the pine isn't answering "why is this happening now?", it answers the question, "why is this fire so much worse?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire
Did you check for forest fires in the past?
However OPs post is more useful than yours.
By now, everyone knows about climate change. But I assume most didn’t know the fact about the pine trees in this area.
Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change.
>Nowadays it’s much more about how we deal with climate change and not so much about the fact that there is human made climate change.
Well said!
The problem isn't who believes in global warming, the problem is a forest fire. It doesn't care if there are 0% or 100% believers. Moving the needle on that percentage has no effect on the problems we will face due to global warming.
Here and now it's possible for a small community or country to take actions that will help the next time there's a forest fire. Or a flood, or a drought, or a heat dome, or a blizzard where blizzards shouldn't be.
Such efforts should clearly be priority 1. A doctor dealing with a gunshot wound doesn't start by urging politicians to reduce crime rates, they start by stopping the bleeding.
Not true, I have seen people deny it on HN recently.
And looking at other debates, yes it is necessary to reiterate the primary cause. Because centrists will absolutely use the lack of that reiteration to do the "well actually it is the pine trees" in two days.
The most important thing is knowing what can be done in the short to medium term locally to improve the situation. If you tell the people living near those forests they need to fix global warming, you're not going anywhere. Can they monitor the forest beds better, do some preventive measures to limit the propagation of fires when they happen? Probably!
Unless you're on a major international forum or you have proper global reach and are a trendsetter, complaining about the obvious global warming isn't going to do much. And even if it's not obvious to some other people, you're not going to change their mind anyway on a HN discussion.
“Centrists” (whatever that means) aren’t denying climate change.
Even if 99% of America accepts climate change that’s still 350,000 that don’t, and there’s a good chance many deniers are just doing it for the lolz.
The world was unwilling to enact the changes that were required. The mitigations of the damage to both the human and natural world are required now, and there’s lots of discussion about that. Not least what happens when a nuclear power of 1.5 billion people reaches a wet bulb temperature high enough to start killing tens of millions.
Yes, pine is flammable. So what? Should we replace it with wood that doesn't burn? And grows on already very dry soil? Because what the "informative" OP hasn't told you is that pine growsso much there because other woods don't do as well.
Different trees react differently to fire. The forest fires of (e.g.) the American west are different than the forest fires in Canada:
> The forest-mismanagement argument was, in fairness, based on real evidence from some regions. In the frequent-fire dry forests of the western US that are dominated by ponderosa pine and mixed conifers the natural fire regime is low-to-moderate intensity surface fire returning every 5 to 30 years, historically stoked in part by Indigenous burning. A century of fire exclusion in those forests really did remove that frequent fire, let stands grow denser and more continuous, and build up a “fire deficit” that raises the odds of severe fire (Hagmann et al. 2021). And in that setting, fuel treatments work: Prichard et al. (2021) find wide agreement that mechanical thinning combined with prescribed burning measurably reduces subsequent fire severity. If you’re arguing about the Sierra Nevada, the management story is as important if not more important than the climate one.
> The problem is that the Canadian boreal is not the Sierra Nevada. It burns in infrequent, high-intensity, stand-replacing crown fires that kill the whole stand on natural fire cycles measured in many decades to centuries (commonly a century or more, and two centuries or longer in the east), not 5 to 30 years. It is, ecologically speaking, supposed to burn this way; black spruce is practically built for it. Fire in this system was never the gentle recurring ground-clearing that suppression interrupted in California. And the burning is astonishingly concentrated: across the boreal, something like 3% of fires account for about 97% of the area burned. This is not a landscape full of many small fires that “used to clean out the fuel.” Rather, its a landscape that waits, and then burns catastrophically under extreme weather.
* https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/canadas-boreal-wildfires-a...
> And grows on already very dry soil? Because what the "informative" OP hasn't told you is that pine growsso much there because other woods don't do as well.
Except the entire forest is 'artificial' in that Napoleon III ordered the draining of the peatlands to create said forest in the first place. Perhaps actually having it as a forest should be reconsidered.
* https://globalpeatlands.org/zombiefiresareravagingpeatlandsi...
The forest was created for industrial purposes and so pine was probably chosen as it grew faster and that's what builders wanted, but is that what want we now? Perhaps the fact that pine grows best there shouldn't be considered at such a high priority, and that reducing the mono-culture, even if it is not "optimal" for growth, be bumped up in priority.
It was already a huge product of human activity: the forest there was cut for firewood, great colds killed the rest in the XVIIe century and grazing sheeps kept it treeless. Pine was chosen because it is endemic and one of the few species able to grow on such poor soils, washed out by rain and sea salt.
You have to love all the people on this website giving advice on Europeans and Canadians on forest management, and that they should abandon any economic use of forests, while they see no problem with the rest of their economic choices fuelling global warming.
We should really go way deeper than just blaming everything on an increase of temperatures, which nevertheless is actually happening.
We, locals, have been warning already for decades of the increase of fires due to an accumulation of reasons, which I have actually described already in another message down below but I can summarize here.
* Forest mass has actually increased a lot during the last decades, Spain has now around 50% more forest mass than in the 1970s.
* Part of the increased mass has to do with reforestation efforts done by governments happening since last half of last century, which basically planted many forests using pine varieties which grow very quickly but also burn quickly (Pines are biologically design to burn with their flammable design and dried needles, that's their feature).
* Historical local forest were composed of many varieties of trees, including oaks, holm oaks, poplar, which grow slowly, are way less prone to burn, and regrow again after a fire. Those varieties were never used in any reforestation efforts, which has resulted in many new forests being extremely prone to burn quickly
* Population has shifted enormously towards big cities, abandoning little villages where forests were part of their style of life. Lumber was part of their economical income, which resulted in continuous care of those forests and efforts in preservation. There are still some communities like that in some areas of Spain, and their forests have the lowest rate of wildfires in the whole country.
* Many techniques like firebreaks, counter-fires, low intensity burning to clear crop stubble, dry brush, and old vegetation to regenerate fresh grass for livestock and prepare fields are now forbidden, again increasing the risk and extension of wildfires
* Forest Grazing is also nowadays completely forbidden. Sheep used to roam everywhere in the country, consuming many burning-prone vegetation, reducing also the risk of wildfires.
But even despite all of that, countries like Spain for example, have nowadays the lowest proportion of burnt forest since the last 50 years.
I don't think it's blaming on global warming. Global warming is just making those problems a lot worse.
It is just the beginning, on average it will get worse every year. Every kilogram of CO2 we emit makes it worse, so it won't stop worsening until we reach zero emissions.
> a sensation that there's nothing we can do.
On the contrary, I think there too much we must do because of global warming. There is so much that we certainly won't be able to do it all, meaning that the situation will get "more complicated" anyway. The more we do, the more we preserve.
To make a comparison that stays in the theme: saying "we won't stop it so there is nothing we can do" is like saying "this burning tree is dead anyway, so there is no need to save the rest of the forest". The tree is dead, it won't come back. And we know for sure that many other trees will die. But we should fight to preserve as much as we can from the forest. The less we do, the more we lose. But we will lose a lot anyway, maybe just not everything (depending on how well we fight).
While I think this is mostly correct, I don't think it's OK to downplay climate change as just a "blame target". These current and extreme wildfires result from hotter and drier conditions, too. That is a major reason. And yes, we can do something about it.
Also, I know that controlled burns, grazing and firebreaks are widely used today in Spain, they are not universally forbidden.
In Wales and Ireland we have the opposite problem, the sheep strip everything bare, the old trees die and the forests cannot regenerate.
> The problem is that sheep are not allowed to graze
Choose one. Slow growing saplings, or sheep grazing on slow growing saplings.
> The problem is that many techniques to regenerate fresh grass for livestock are forbidden.
Because is a forest, not a meadow. The goal shouldn't be to breed sheep here. Farmers are always pressing to remove just a few trees, to make space, to burn bush for "regenerating grass". In the current situation, their short term interests aren't compatible with our middle and long term survival.
> The problem is that people migrated to the city
Good. Most wildfires are caused by people
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/22/europe/arson-cats-italy-w...
A bit of a distinction without a difference. The climate is not changing back, it's the new normal. In that climate, this particular kind of agriculture (huge pine monocultures) has become a problem.
It breaks my heart to say this, I've spent nearly all my childhood summers in my family's summer house down there. This year, I left just a few days before the evacuation order would have come.
It's going to be burning every year now and if we want to be safe there, the forest can't stay the same.
Climate won't get any "new normal" until we reach strictly zero emission.
As long as we emit CO2, climate will get worse. There is no new normal: every year it will get worse.
It doesn't invalidate your point though, that it cannot stay the same and we have to do something. I'm just nitpicking on the "new normal". There won't be a new normal until we stop emitting CO2, it will just get worse and worse.
[0]: https://youtu.be/eRoU3whzX_Q?t=450
ETA: clarification
However, Fontainebleau forest has many pine trees.
In fact there is an invasive caterpillar there that lives in pine trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_processionary
The caterpillars are also a consequence of warming.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendies_en_for%C3%AAt_de_Fon...
Notice how the last was worse by one or two orders of magnitude.
You can handwave all you want the this and the southwest forests are particularly flammable, but what you are pointing out are only "canaries in the coal mines": they are the first to burn, but other forests will follow suit if global warming continues.
In fact, in the most historically prone areas, the Mediterranean part of France, number of fires and surface area burnt have tended to decrease over time since the 1970s [1], which shows that being prepared works and this experience must now be used in more areas of the country.
[1] https://observatoire.foret.gouv.fr/themes/l-historique-des-f...
Occasional fires, sure. But very clearly nothing approaching the current scale and frequency.
The last really big one in that region was in 2022; and there are currently not one but 2 parallel fires in the same forest.
Now it will happen more and more every year, there is no stopping that trend.
I get where you're coming from but I don't think this is helpful.
Everyone with any sense knows global warming will cause heatwaves and they increase the risk of fires, but nobody in France can do anything about it. Even if everyone in France would do everything they can to stop global warming starting tomorrow, it would change nothing. It wouldn't help even if they got all of the EU on board.
What the people of France can do is demand more resources for fire protection, build air conditioned locations for the poor and elderly, plant trees for shade and so on.
This can be done immediately and will actually help. It also engages everyone, even a climate denier can get onboard with fighting fires and having shelter for heat.
If we stop at "it's the global warming", the response is either apathy or policies. We should prioritize things that will help right now.
You are falling for the voting fallacy: "my vote had a miniscule effect on the final result, why should I vote?". The paradox is that at the end, if everyone thinks so, nobody votes.
See also: collective action problem.
>See also: collective action problem.
I think you misread me - I'm not saying "Don't try to stop global warming", I'm saying "Don't focus on global warming when there is a forest fire".
The nation of France has a decent chance of preventing forest fires within their borders, but it won't happen by subsidizing electric cars or buying carbon credits. It will happen by adding firefighters, fire trucks, better training and such.
I'm not saying one thing has to exclude the other, but in this case they are competing for some of the same money.
Carbon credits and big conferences to discuss Paris agreements could pay for a *lot* of firefighters.
Small correction, but Fontainebleau is a fairly mixed forest including 20-30% pine.
And on top of that it’s El Niño.
Edit: Before anyone misconstrues what I'm saying: no, I'm not denying global warming. I'm just saying this is why this summer in particular was always likely to be a hot one in Europe.
And going forwards the sulphur thing has most likely caused a step change from temperatures in Europe before Covid, despite underlying warming continuing at the same rate
We used to thin the trees and clear the underbrush, which drastically reduces flammability and the ability for forest fires to rapidly spread.
But that's not seen as "environmentally friendly" these days.
The problem (as always) is that it is complicated.
We are living in a mass extinction right now (orders of magnitudes faster than the one of the dinosaurs), mostly because of habitat loss. It has nothing to do with the climate (of course the climate is making it worse, but we screwed the biodiversity before that).
Is thinning the trees and clearing the underbrush good for the biodiversity? Probably not. Is it good to reduce flammability? Probably yes.
But I don't think it is fair to say that those who care about biodiversity are obviously wrong because preserving the biodiversity make forest more flammable. If you think like this, the solution is to go live in a bunker. Many people find that attractive (just look at how many dream about living in a bunker on mars), but I don't.
Growth-driven ecological harm isn’t unique to capitalism.
Probably a dozen reasons why we cannot that I am unaware of, but from my arm chair it looks good.
> Some efforts have begun to diversify the Landes forest and to maintain or promote deciduous trees, particularly along the edges of plots. The major difficulty, according to foresters, is that very few species are able to grow in this region, where the sandy soil is very poor and very acidic (it is one of the poorest soils in Europe). Foresters describe the maritime pine as a "miracle species" in this regard.
> While other species can still grow, it is much more slowly and with greater difficulty. Radically transforming this vast forest, currently 80% dominated by maritime pines, therefore seems complicated, and there is also a significant economic stake involved in timber production in the region.
The second part is right though, these are important but very long term efforts worldwide which is why we need to start doing something now. A few percent difference could still be the difference between a fire and not a fire or between new wildlife moving there or not.
Dans le roman de la Rose
Les pierres alignées de la lande
On sent quelque chose derrière les choses
Pines are the survivalists of the forests. They can grow where nobody else can. What I mean is that this monoculture of Pine trees is not really a monoculture. Is an ecosystem.
The Landes are set over a lot of marine sand, so is not easy to create a firewall (mixing flammable and less flammable trees). The solution of just replacing pines by other species is not so easy technically. Pines are the only native tree that can trive in such poor soil.
see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/train-cab-wildfir...
[edit] other video links in case the first link isn't viewable outside Canada.
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwc16INKNq0 or https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qAerRqQQHAM
Now I am wondering if my return flight from Bordeaux in a few days will actually happen. Currently the airport is still operating, although the surrounding area has been evacuated. It really looks apocalyptic there, though:
https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2026/07/aeroport-bordeaux-fum...
Good luck, and stay safe.
More layers -> PM2.5 is very telling.
The Landes Forest which is currently burning is really interesting in that you have all 4 of the major European disturbance types there: Human clear cuts, storm damage, large scale insect infestation and fire.
Most other forested areas in Europe only have two or three of these. For example most of the Mediterranean does not have meaningful amount of storm damage.
Just shows how badly suited the Landes Forest with its current forest management is in todays climate.
The whole damned thing was planted in the 1850s as an enormous pine plantation.
Same thing as drives wildfires in Portugal - maritime pine (and in Portugal’s case eucalyptus). Vast, dense, barely managed pyrophytic monocultures. The problem isn’t poorly managed forest, it’s the forest, period - it shouldn’t be there.
Where native forest (oak, chestnut, hazel, etc) remains, we don't have major fires. They are finally experimenting with planting firebreaks of native species in some areas, which has been quite effective at halting the spread of fires. But realistically, we need a huge government investment to get rid of this monoculture entirely.
Not really. It helps, but it is not a perfect solution. It did not prevent the massive wildfire near Fontainebleau, for example.
That's a pretty great example in the opposite direction, as Fontainebleau today only contains isolated pockets of protected old-growth, and the rest has been systematically converted over the last ~150 years to highly flammable pine trees...
With how natural forest disturbances are more and more starting to affect the plantation, it proves to be seen what the response will be.
The thing is that it is an incredibly productive forest (only in terms of biomass). So now there's a bunch of capital riding on it which will have a vested interest to keep it productive.
No, it shouldn't. It used to be a forest but was cut down by firewood and sheep grazing.
Stop with the "return to nature" fallacy. With how things are going, even "natural" forests are going to burn down.
https://daily.jstor.org/climate-canvasses-of-the-little-ice-...
In this particular instance, everybody in this thread seems to be forgetting the region where the fires are currently raging used to be very unsanitary swamps before the pine forests were planted. These older wetlands were a major source of disease and misery for the local population. The reason why they only planted pines were because the soil there is poor & acidic. Nothing else grows really. Now of course, this needs to be rethought in the light of climate change, but it wasn't a stupid idea at the time.
[1] The unlikely triumph of Napoleon III, https://engelsbergideas.com/reviews/the-unlikely-triumph-of-...
[2] Napoleon III and the Second Empire, https://www.routledge.com/Napoleon-III-and-the-Second-Empire...
[3] The People's Emperor, https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571361304-the-peoples-em...
I did in fact recently read about the infrastructure works in France (and elsewhere) during that era. (Great read so far: Liaquat Ahamed's 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World)
From what I saw online, there are indications that firebreaks do not always work, for instance when embers fly over long distances, carried by the wind, over firebreaks, and start fires on the other side. But I would guess that firebreaks like cleared areas, for instance between settlements and forests, should be able to mitigate at least some of the fires.
Here in Sweden we had a large fire that jumped a lake.
So basically entire tree stands have to die or crowns have to lose their leafs for it to be detectable form space.
Main insect of concern are bark beetles (ips typographus for spruce, ips sexendtatus for pines) which disrupt the cambium causing a gradual vitality decline until you have dead standing trees. In satellite imagery this is visible as irregular brownish-red patches.
On the other hand there's gypsy moths (also known as spongy moth, Lymantria dispar) which affect the leafs directly, causing large scale temporary defoliation in broadleafed trees usually in the middle of summer.
There's hundreds more insects but few have the capability to cause large scale die-off in trees which are grown in monoculture (pine/spruce/beech).
An open case is more in terms of temperate forests which are increasingly starting to burn, for example in Austria or other central European countries. These tend to be understory fires, which (for now) only rarely catch the crown.
For these fires the tree crown stays green and you can't see any change until later in the year or the next year, where the trees die due to damage the fire did to their cambium and roots. Correctly attributing this later decline to fire damage is a bit challenging.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
Thank you for the insights, both of you.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_flammagenitus
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammagenitus_cloud
[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
Technical details in the video link start around 3:34 for those interested
Excuse the French for the non Francophones but trying to be detailed and exacting here on why this isn’t bad journalism to use that term
"Witness to Disaster | National Geographic" - https://youtu.be/clTeqIpGBeU
At 29:00 pyrocumulonimbus is explained.
Say they start sulfur injection or whatever, and a year later there are crop failures in India. While it could have happened anyway, there is now a plausible chance that it can be pinned on who ever did the geoengineering. The amount of scapegoating on any climate issue would be wild.
And, what subsidies? The fossil fuel companies are just trying not to get legislated out of business, last I checked. In my book the disruptive subsidies are for corn (encouraging irresponsible land use; solar panels in those fields would be far more energy efficient).
That said, piling more geo-engineering on top of the problem will not solve it. It will just create more issues with unforeseen consequences and instability. What we really need to do is to reduce emissions. It’s much simpler and cheaper than any form of geo-engineering you could think of to mitigate the consequences.
I'm worried that geoengineering will upset the balance of things even more, a temporary and short-term solution for incidents.
What we do need now is finally the determination to fight climate change. We have all the tools at our disposal to eliminate any fossil fuel burning within some years. We should finally take this as the priority it should be.
Wonder how much 2020 Bunker Fuel ban contributed.
Biggest wildfire in the history of Spain: 2026
Biggest wildfire in the modern history of Norway: 2026
Biggest wildfire in Austria: 2026
Biggest wildfire in Germany: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Denmark: 2025
Biggest wildfire in UK: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Montenegro: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Serbia: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Albania: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Bulgaria: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Malta: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Ukraine: 2024
Biggest wildfire in USA: 2024
Biggest wildfire in Greece: 2023
Biggest wildfire in Switzerland: 2023
Biggest wildfire in Czechia: 2022
Biggest wildfire in Slovenia: 2022
Biggest wildfire in Italy: 2021
Biggest wildfire in Turkey: 2021
Biggest wildfire in Poland: 2020
Biggest wildfire in Ireland: 2020
Plus some special honorary mentions for some of the largest wildfires in:
- France: 2026
- Lithuania: 2026,
- Estonia: 2026.
- Cyprus: 2025
Almost every European country and USA suffered the biggest wildfires in their whole history in the same period as the Ukraine war. France still can sing bingo. Almost there.
Hungary on the other hand, suffered their biggest wildfire in 2012. One hurrah for Hungary. And Croatia in 2017, congratulations. I wonder what is different to the other countries here. They must clean their forests really good.
https://xn--incendiosespaa-2nb.es/ (in Spanish)
It is disheartening to see how everything is basically in red.
I guess I need a disclaimer on every comment that says "climate change is obviously real you can save your downvotes" jfc
240,000 acres is about 97,000 hectares. By July 26, Spain had already lost more than 150,000 hectares, or around 371,000 acres, six times the area burned by the same point last year...
You need to quantify in sq km or some other objective unit what makes this so unique.
Regarding eucalyptus burning: a lot of them burned suddenly after a policy change allowing land to be repurposed after wildfires, I've just been told by locals.
Some very big wildfires with criminally suspicious causes are based on Eucaliptus, but pines and forest regeneration on the low bush state are the worse offenders, as they were actively targeted first by locals and now also by foreigners. Locals hate young bushes of the less flammable species with passion here. They really can't refrain themselves from keep burning it.
Laws that forbid the change of use of land did make a big difference in the past, but are seen as ideological and were revoked by far right politicians. The start of wildfire waves after that move was immediate. This happened a few years ago. One step forward is followed by two steps backward.
No one here is really discussing “climate change”.
Is it denial, or just that we’ve accepted the obvious?
Even climate change denial has moved from denying the fact to denying that we can fix anything, for either economic or technical reasons.
The governance crisis: how can we follow science on so many things, how can countries completely change on short order, but not for this...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Hearing_of_James_E._Han...
Hansen is still going and has been ringing the alarm that we have deeply under estimated the relative carbon loading and heating potential on emissions. There is a real fear that we have locked in a lot more warming potential than the models have been predicting via several factors. Namely carbon warms slightly more than anticipated, more methane releases, great water vapor levels as a result of the previous two and reduced reflective materials decreasing our relative albedo.
A few years ago EU voted to define two technologies as green. One was natural gas, and the other was nuclear. Which parties voted for natural gas, and which parties voted for nuclear?
There is a EU decision to phase out ICE in cars. A good continuation would be to issue a similar decision to phase out ICE in the energy grid. It would be nice if both sides could just join together on such decision.
Problems have solutions, predicaments have responses. We are in a predicament, and the quicker and more direct we can respond the better chance we have to adverting the more nasty paths of the future.
This isn’t a “it’s summer, and fires burn” type of a deal. Even though most fires are set by idiots on purpose, it spreads so well because everywhere is dry. Most parcs and fields look like savannas instead of the usual green.
Climate is changing drastically, exactly as predicted.
But that's not really the point being debated. Nobody is claiming climate change invented wildfires. But it is making the conditions for extreme fires more common. The IPCC concludes with high confidence that fire hazard conditions, including heatwaves and fire weather, have increased across Europe since 1980, particularly in southern and western Europe, even though ignition sources and land management still matter.
Climate change is increasing the odds that fires become larger and harder to control.
Western Europe has also experienced increasingly frequent and severe droughts in recent years. Those prolonged dry conditions leave forests and vegetation far more combustible, making fires spread faster and burn more intensely once they start.
I don't think it will be grim forever, this isn't "DOOOOMED, WE ARE ALL DOOMED!" but I am not holding out for the Frutiger Aero future of only a few decades back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Benz
begging governments to solve the problem has obviously failed; focusing our efforts on fostering ideas and inventions is our best hope at getting our of this mess.
Given the dominance of state level actors in fossil fuel extraction (a role they did not have in horse based transport), to deny states have a role in decarbonizing energy seems naive. I don’t see what’s unreasonable to suggest that the current massive resources states put into supporting fossil fuel consumption and spending on wars to protect its production and distribution be redirected towards accelerating the adoption of modern clean energy production and use.
Build…
More…
Datacenters…
But seriously, hacker news routinely denies the obvious when it comes to climate crisis.
There was already an issue but it has just been amplified.
https://incendieencours.fr/en/incendies says 17 ongoing and 92 recent in France. I can't promise they count the same way, but… the motive's also substantially different:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgxv8n7wd0o
> Most fires here are illegally started by humans, according to scientists, the Federal Police, and the government: loggers and miners looking to exploit land in the Amazon, or farmers turning it into pasture.
But then, it's real that Bolsonaro was criminally negligent on fire-avoidance. What we will discover next year is how much of it could be avoided at all.
Thank you for your service everyone, these are real life heroes like the ones you see on Star Wars movies but real.
It is currently marking my little town as under fire / burned down, but it's not and hasn't been so far. (north west front of the fire, next to the lake). It looks like their contouring algorithm is very greedy and any hot spot marked in the past few days has become part of their fire perimeter.
The massive fire clouds probably contribute to the difficulty of measuring ground temperature from satellite.
Fascinating, we’ve got sentient clouds before sentient AI
Greta Thunberg announces she has gone 'net-zero' on swearing after 'f-bomb' furore - https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/greta-t...
This also addresses the tree death issue.
Pyrophilic species can even benefit from forest fires with reproduction being triggered by them.
It would also be quite unusual for accountant teams to follow individual trees around throughout their lifecycle, ticking little boxes when they die or something, in order to follow through on carbon credits. Think about this realistically.
There's no guarantee that a tree planted to "offset" a flight will grow to any kind of maturity, let alone survive three months. Some saplings just die.
Or maybe that tree got planted in a tree plantation for timber, or wood pulp, and 20 years later, it's framing timber or newsprint.
(I am someone who does revegetation projects and have planted a large number of trees)
Just a few more GPUs ought to fix it.
It thinks for a few days, cross comparing everything in written history and then comes back with only a single sentence.
"Love the Earth and life like you love yourselves."
Then it goes quiet not answering anything else.
Unfortunately for us, the Earth has no preferences and doesn't run on our schedule.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F3...
I can't recall his name but I think he had a mustache.