Two new studies found that human-caused climate change made the extreme wildfires in Spain and France far more likely and has roughly doubled the number of extreme fire-weather days across Southern Europe compared to past decades. Researchers noted that better fire management has reduced fires and burned area through 2018, but worsening climate conditions have since overwhelmed those gains.

“This study makes sense and provides numbers to confirm what fire scientists already knew,” says Jacob Bendix, professor emeritus of geography and the environment, who wasn’t part of either research. “We have always known that fires ignite more easily and spread more explosively under conditions of extreme heat and drought. And we’ve known for decades that extreme heat and drought are becoming more common due to anthropogenic climate change. So the general outline of these events, if not all the details, was tragically predictable.”

Read more in the Associated Press article, “Human-caused climate change made Spanish, French fires much more likely, scientists calculate.”