What changed
2026-08-19 06:51 UTC → 2026-08-19 07:04 UTC ·
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In mid‑2026, Belgium reported a record 117 wildfires in its first seven months, surpassing the total for the entire previous year and almost doubling the 2010‑2025 average. The fires, concentrated mainly in Flanders and linked largely to human activity, burned about 31 hectares of nature reserves. Researchers attributed the spike to hotter, drier conditions tied to climate change. At the same time, a broader analysis highlighted that extreme weather linked to climate change is driving unprecedented wildfire activity worldwide. Europe’s cumulative burn area exceeded 254,000 hectares by late July, with France, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy suffering the largest losses. The report also recalled historic large‑scale fires, such as the 1910 Rocky Mountains blaze and the ongoing Siberian taiga fires, underscoring a feedback loop in which forest loss releases carbon that fuels further warming and fire risk. By August mid-August 2026, the scale of global wildfire activity intensified further. In the United States, wildfire activity reached a decade-high pace, with more than 7.2 million acres burned by mid-August—nearly double the area burned during the same period in 2025. Canada also faced massive forest fires, while in Europe, fires continued to cause destruction in France, Spain, and Greece, and destroyed homes in England. By mid-August, environmental extremes intensified in Belgium, where firefighters encircled a massive wildfire in the High Fens nature reserve that destroyed 3,000 hectares. Officials warned that total extinction could take weeks due to deep-seated burning in peatlands. This coincided with acute water scarcity; scarcity. Brussels maintained a yellow drought alert, and Wallonia blocked a proposal by Google to use river water from the Sambre for data center cooling to protect limited resources. Globally, Suriname increased fire brigade readiness due to extreme drought, while Indonesia reported 154,000 fire hotspots and the emergence of a submerged village in a dried-out reservoir.