A new paper assessing the fire-related mortality has been published by Lancet Planetary Health: Alari, A., Ballester, J., Milà, C., Benmarhnia, T., Sofiev, M., Uppstu, A., Hänninen, R., Tonne, C., 2025. Quantifying the short-term mortality effects of wildfire smoke in Europe: a multicountry epidemiological study in 654 contiguous regions. The Lancet Planetary Health 101296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanplh.2025.101296

Europe is experiencing its worst fire season since 2006. The total burnt area is already approaching 1 million ha burnt since the beginning of 2025, exceeding the whole-year maximum of any previous year during 2006-2024. The new record has been set due to an unprecedented strength of fires in Southern Europe in the middle of August. The most-affected countries are Spain and Portugal. August is a traditional fire month in the Southern Europe, but the heatwave in August 2025 strongly exacerbated the situation. Fire smoke from these fires has been distributed all over Southern and Central Europe.
More information: https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/apps/effis.statistics/seasonaltrend

Over 450 participants representing governments, NGOs, indigenous people, scientists, fire managers, international organizations, etc. came together to advance the Integrated Fire Management agenda. WMO GAW represented through VFSP-WAS (M.Sofiev).

The pre-operational fire smoke forecasting system based on IS4FIRES and SILAM models has been set into automatic operations at FMI. Development of the front-end Web site started.