Overall, the northern Summer has been one of the worst fire seasons in recent years in Europe and Canada. Fires have been significant in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and the United Kingdom1. In Europe, it began early after the warmest June on record in western Europe. Indeed, drought conditions were recorded in eastern England, most of France, southern Germany, most of Hungary, western Romania among other parts, and the burnt area up to 30 September 2026, was almost twice that of the average over the 2006-2025 period2. By late July hundreds of thousands of people had been evacuated across France and Spain; the armed forces had been mobilised in France to assist in fighting fires, and smoke degrade air quality across large areas of Europe2,3.
In Canada, more than 3.7 million hectares have been burnt, which is nowhere near the horrendous fire season on 2023 when over 15 million hectares had been burnt. In addition to first in northern Canada, large fires have also burnt large areas of Alaska, northern Siberia. These are particularly concerning because they burn peatlands and boreal forests, which store vast amounts of Carbon and Nitrogen4,5. Indeed, the peatland fires can ‘overwinter’ underground and can reignite in spring6.
Satellite observations from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service indicate that global biomass burning emissions during the first half of 2026 were among the lowest on record largely because fire activity in parts of Africa and Asia was below average7.
I wrote about the coming El Niño just over a month ago and the Bureau of Meteorology had predicted unusually high temperatures for October to December8.
It turned out that Australia has experienced its second hottest September on record, with the average temperatures being 2.7 degrees C above the long term 1961-1990 average9. Some places in South Australia have recorded their hottest September days on record, in some places, the temperatures have been 10-15 degrees C above average10.
This augurs for a very hot 2026-2027 Summer, with almost the whole of the country having an 80% chance of exceeding the median maxiumum temperature between December and February11.
We just had blinds installed on our northwest facing balcony. We’ll probably need them.
Sources
- https://www.euronews.com/2026/08/13/wildfires-in-europe-is-2026-already-the-worst-year-on-record
- https://eu-space.europa.eu/news/observer-summer-fire-how-copernicus-monitored-europes-2026-wildfire-season
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-26/deadly-wildfires-france-spain-evacuations/106959442
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001670612500196X
- https://arctic-council.org/news/impacts-of-wildfires-on-permafrost-and-peatlands/
- https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/21425/
- https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-global-biomass-burning-emissions-2026-their-lowest-level-2003
- https://www.blotreport.com/2026/09/15/the-coming-el-nino/
- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/05/australia-weather-el-nino-climate-crisisseptember-record
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-29/sa-september-high-temperatures-records-broken/107208004
- https://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/outlooks/