During the last decades, climate and land use changes led to an increased prevalence of megafires in Mediterranean-type climate regions (MCRs). Here, we argue that current wildfire management policies in MCRs are destined to fail. Focused on fire suppression, these policies largely ignore ongoing climate warming and landscape-scale buildup of fuels. The result is a ‘firefighting trap’ that contributes to ongoing fuel accumulation precluding suppression under extreme fire weather, and resulting in more severe and larger fires. We believe that a ‘business as usual’ approach to wildfire in MCRs will not solve the fire problem, and recommend that policy and expenditures be rebalanced between suppression and mitigation of the negative impacts of fire. This requires a paradigm shift: policy effectiveness should not be primarily measured as a function of area burned (as it usually is), but rather as a function of avoided socio-ecological damage and loss.

Every year worldwide some extraordinary wildfires occur, overwhelming suppression capabilities, causing substantial damages, and often resulting in fatalities. Given their increasing frequency, there is a debate about how to address these wildfires with significant social impacts, but there is no agreement upon terminology to describe them. The concept of extreme wildfire event (EWE) has emerged to bring some coherence on this kind of events. It is increasingly used, often as a synonym of other terms related to wildfires of high intensity and size, but its definition remains elusive. The goal of this paper is to go beyond drawing on distinct disciplinary perspectives to develop a holistic view of EWE as a social-ecological phenomenon. Based on literature review and using a transdisciplinary approach, this paper proposes a definition of EWE as a process and an outcome. Considering the lack of a consistent “scale of gravity” to leverage extreme wildfire events such as in natural hazards (e.g., tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes) we present a proposal of wildfire classification with seven categories based on measurable fire spread and behavior parameters and suppression difficulty. The categories 5 to 7 are labeled as EWE.

Historical fire records and meteorological observations, spanning more than 1 century (1894–2010), were gathered and assembled in a database, to provide long-term fire–weather associations. We investigated the relationships between forest fire activity and meteorological parameters and sought to find temporal patterns and trends in these historical records and to identify any linkages between meteorological parameters and fire occurrence in the eastern Mediterranean region. Trend analysis of the time series revealed a statistically significant increase in the number of fires and air temperature, particularly after the mid-1970s. Fire occurrence, expressed as the annual number of fires and total burnt area, was strongly correlated with the mean maximum and the absolute maximum air temperature which, in turn, was related to the occurrence of summer heat waves. Total burnt area was also strongly negatively correlated with fire-season precipitation, and positively correlated with 2-year-lagged annual and summer precipitation, underlying the effect of precipitation in controlling fuel production and moisture. These findings support the argument that although annually lagged precipitation totals may have a marginal effect on fire risk by influencing biomass production and accumulation, the lag0 weather parameters are the main drivers of fire spread by directly controlling fuel moisture.

Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-scale wildland fire statistics across European countries, there is still a crucial need to collect and summarize in-depth local analysis and understanding of the wildland fire condition and associated challenges across Europe. This article aims to provide a general overview of the current wildland fire patterns and challenges as perceived by national representatives, supplemented by national fire statistics (2009–2018) across Europe. For each of the 31 countries included, we present a perspective authored by scientists or practitioners from each respective country, representing a wide range of disciplines and cultural backgrounds. The authors were selected from members of the COST Action “Fire and the Earth System: Science & Society” funded by the European Commission with the aim to share knowledge and improve communication about wildland fire. Where relevant, a brief overview of key studies, particular wildland fire challenges a country is facing, and an overview of notable recent fire events are also presented. Key perceived challenges included (1) the lack of consistent and detailed records for wildland fire events, within and across countries, (2) an increase in wildland fires that pose a risk to properties and human life due to high population densities and sprawl into forested regions, and (3) the view that, irrespective of changes in management, climate change is likely to increase the frequency and impact of wildland fires in the coming decades. Addressing challenge (1) will not only be valuable in advancing national and pan-European wildland fire management strategies, but also in evaluating perceptions (2) and (3) against more robust quantitative evidence.

Wildfire fatalities remain a significant problem in Mediterranean Europe. Although there is a strong inter-annual variability with regard to their number, repeated tragic accidents remind us of this grim occurrence, despite the increasing firefighting capacity aimed to improve human safety. In this paper, we present an analysis of the 865 fatalities caused by wildfires in the 1945–2016 period. Data originating from national databases were merged, contextual and weather factors related to the accidents that caused these deaths were documented and analysed to explore probable relationships with the number and type of fatalities. Results show a major rise of fatalities in late 1970s in the four regions of Greece, Sardinia (Italy), Spain and Portugal. Fatalities present a strong seasonality in summer months, as expected. Overall, Spain has the highest absolute numbers of fatalities; however, normalisations by population, and burned and forest area show that annual number of fatalities is comparatively smaller. Certain other factors showed correlation with mortality. Civilians were the most affected group in Greece (65%) and Sardinia (58%), but not in Spain and Portugal. Findings indicate that an in-depth revision of fire-management policies and practices is required, with emphasis on prevention planning in urban areas, and better training of the firefighting resources.