Geneva, Sept. 5, 2025 (Lusa) - An expert from the UN climate agency predicted on Friday that the forest fires that ravaged Portugal and Spain in August are likely to worsen air quality across the European continent.
"The high emissions caused by these fires have the potential to affect not only Spanish cities, but also the rest of Western Europe and the entire continent," said the chief scientist of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
At a press conference, Lorenzo Labrador emphasised that the impact of the emissions caused by the fires, which have affected up to 1% of the Iberian Peninsula, often crosses borders.
The expert recalled the forest fires that affected Canada last year, whose effects on air quality were also felt in Europe, crossing the North Atlantic.
Labrador also pointed out that forest fires are a permanent source of the most polluting and harmful particles in the atmosphere, those with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns (known as 2.5 PM).
The expert made these comments while presenting the annual edition of the WMO's air quality bulletin, which compiles data from 2024.
The report points to an increase in pollution by 2.5 PM particles, above all in South America, due to the forest fires that have hit regions such as the Amazon, and also in Canada, Siberia and Central Africa, under similar circumstances.
On the other hand, this type of pollution has fallen again in eastern China, where cities like Beijing were once among the most polluted in the world, but where systematic mitigation measures have had positive results.
The report also analyses variations in the presence of aerosols (small suspended particles), some types of which contribute to global warming, while others produce cooling.
For example, the aerosols produced by sulphur emissions have decreased over the years thanks to the measures taken to reduce their presence in fuels, which has improved air quality and reduced premature deaths and childhood asthma.
However, this reduction has also contributed to an increase of 0.04ºC in global temperatures by 2025, Labrador pointed out, since these aerosols reflect part of the sun's radiation.
The UN agency also highlights the increase in “smog” episodes in winter in many regions of the world, including the overpopulated north of India. It warned that "they are not just a seasonal meteorological phenomenon," but a symptom of the increase in pollutant emissions resulting from human activity.
This prediction comes a day after the release of a study concluding that climate change caused by human activity has increased the risk of heatwaves like the one that fuelled the forest fires in Portugal and Spain in August by 40 times.
VQ/ADB // ADB.
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