Fires: 2025 among the “worst years” of recent decades in meteorological terms

 

The director of the Centre for Forest Fire Studies at the University of Coimbra admits that the rains at the beginning of the year have worsened the situation, as they caused “a lot of vegetation to grow, which is now dry and “ready to burn.”

This year, in meteorological terms, is “very close” to the “worst years” in recent decades and could be “more serious” than 2017, when tragic fires were recorded in the country, warned forest fire expert Domingos Xavier Viegas.

“Taking as a reference some of the worst years on record” – for example, 2003, 2005, 2017, 2022 -, which “are among the worst years” in recent decades, “this year is very close to those” and “is following very closely the year 2017” and “being, ultimately, more serious in terms of indicators”, said Viegas.

The director of the Centre for Studies on Forest Fires (CEIF) , at the University of Coimbra, explained, in statements to Lusa, that based on data from the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) and other indicators, he has been monitoring the evolution of conditions in the centre of the country that may favour the occurrence of rural fires.

Although he emphasizes that the IPMA will have “more complete and more extensive data”, Xavier Viegas said that, based on an indicator “from the Canadian fire danger indexing system”, called “dryness index, which measures the state of soil dryness”, cumulatively, practically ” it has not rained in the country for several weeks, at least” in the central region, and, therefore, “the state of soil dryness is worsening”.

“The fuels, not just the fine, dry, dead ones, which dry out very quickly, but others,” the “shrubs, which have a longer response time, also dry out and their dryness increases as we progress” through the season, he stressed, noting that, “therefore, they become increasingly available to burn.”

This year, he said, “this index has been increasing at a rate equal to or greater than that which increased in 2017”, when there were “two very bad periods” in June, causing fires that killed six dozen people, with “an improvement in mid-August”, but then with “a period of heat without rain” and, in October, again “very high values of the dryness index”.

The retired professor from the University of Coimbra admitted that the rains at the beginning of the year worsened the situation, as they caused “a lot of vegetation to grow, which is now dry and “ready to burn” , in addition to “some vegetation cleaning actions” carried out having ended up “having no effect”, as the “vegetation has grown back”.

“What I said, (…) based on data from Coimbra, therefore from the central region, is only valid for a part of the territory, because there are certainly other parts of the territory where conditions are worse than these”, stressed Domingos Xavier Viegas.

In this sense, given the high temperatures in the northern and central interior, “in a consecutive manner”, and also in the Alentejo and the south, the conditions may be “in relative terms even worse” than in the center, he admitted.

“Quite dangerous” year

One of the University of Coimbra’s programs for measuring the moisture content of forest fuels is carried out with a sample in Lousã, with fuels representative of the center and north of the country, and Xavier Viegas highlighted that the “moisture content of dead fuels is already very, very low.”

“The data my colleagues provided me indicates moisture levels of around 4 or 6%, which are values that indicate an extreme danger index. And the moisture levels of the bushes” are “among the lowest 5% since we have records for over 20 years,” he noted.

” It’s actually been a pretty bad year from this point of view , and therefore quite dangerous. Hopefully the conditions will change,” stressed the CEIF director, adding that the situation can only change with increased humidity and rain.

The expert also called for “people to be very careful”, to avoid the use of fire and to prevent new ignitions, because, as he has seen in previous weeks, “unfortunately, there continue to be new ignitions every day and this is completely inexplicable.”