ATHENS – Climate change that’s largely ignored by world governments – apart from window dressing and kicking the can down the road approaches – is a global problem but it seems worse in Greece, where summer fires and heat waves have intensified.

With firefighters barely able to keep a blaze from getting deeper into Athens after reaching its northern neighborhoods, and traveling 25 miles over three days to get there, the country has again become the focal point of summer fires.

The government said it’s the result of climate change exacerbated by drought and lingering heat waves that have made Greece seem like an island, and brought worries it will become too hot for tourists.

In a review of the phenomenon, Euronews said of Greece that, “There is no doubt that the Mediterranean country is on the frontlines of human-caused climate change in Europe,” noting deadly fires and floods in 2023.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/08/12/deadly-heatwaves-in-june-a-climate-scientist-explains-why-extreme-weather-is-battering-gre

The most recent fire devastated an area twice the size of Manhattan and since 2017 some 37 percent of forests and woods in the major prefecture of Attica – where Athens is located – have been destroyed by fire.

For years, summer fires were often blamed on arson to clear land for development and no law prohibiting building on those areas, and now penalties for deliberately or accidentally starting fires have been increased.

The memory of the July 23, 2018 wildfires that killed 104 people and nearly wiped out the seaside village of Mati about 20 miles northeast of Athens have lingered although none of the officials convicted over their roles went to jail.

“The Mediterranean is a hot spot of the climate crisis,” Kostas Lagouvardos, Research Director at the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) told the site. And while Spain, Italy and other countries have been affected, it seems worse in Greece.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent, with temperatures here rising at roughly twice the global average, noted the United Nation’sWorld Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus.

Lagouvardos said that Cyprus, Turkey and North Africa are also being badly impacted by rising heat but that the Eastern Mediterranean is a cauldron, Greece with an average temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit.)

To better assess how his country’s climate is changing, Lagouvardos founded and coordinates a network of hundreds of automated surface meteorological stations across Greece, the news site added.

That gives more localized heat warnings and tracks trends of where the temperature is increasing across the country and curiously have shown it’s worse in the northwest region that’s not near the sea.

NOA is monitoring extreme weather events – which it classifies as those causing significant social and economic impacts and said from 2000-09 there were 60 of them, a 5o percent jump to 90 between 2010-19.

“The existence of many islands amplifies these [climate] vulnerabilities due to their isolation, varied microclimates, and the logistical challenges in managing disasters across a dispersed archipelago,” Christos Zerefos, Secretary-General at the Academy of Athens and climate envoy for Greece told the news site.

THE WINDS OF CHANGE BLOWING

“Greek islands host unique ecosystems and biodiversity that are highly sensitive to changes in temperature and precipitation, climate change, through increased fires and extreme weather, is the most significant threat to these ecosystems,” he added.

Added Lagouvardos: “We have a system that works altogether – the sea, the air – and as one of the components in this system is warming, then it warms the other,” with marine heatwaves getting longer, more frequent and more severe.

Greece often sees hot African sand land on the country, coming across the Mediterranean from the Sahara, cars and houses and the land covered with the silty deposits, sometimes for days on end.

These winds are typically very dry and can desiccate vegetation, making it more prone to being sparked and spreading fires, said Zerefos. And Greece also is subject to strong, dry northern winds which blow over the Aegean Sea, mainly affecting the islands and the eastern parts including Athens.

This June set a record for being so hot so early and the whole summer has seen little relenting of temperatures near 100 degrees, making it even too hot at times to go to the beach because of the hot sands.

“Their strong, persistent nature can fan existing fires, making them harder to control and spreading them more rapidly across the islands and mainland,” Zerefos explained, adding that climate change might be making them even more intense.

If there is a distinction to be made between Greece and other Mediterranean countries regarding climate impacts, Lagouvardos said it’s the number of forest fires, which is disproportionately high.

“Greece is facing a war in a time of peace,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared in 2023 when the fires killed 28 people. “The climate crisis is here and forces us to see everything differently,” he said.

But politics plays a role too, with the effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the energy market forcing Greece to return to burning coal to generate electricity, one of the catalysts for worsening climate change.

In 2021, in response to that summer’s devastating wildfires, Greece created the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection but later replaced a Cypriot brought in to head the agency and moved to another.

“I have found that the new Ministry has greatly improved the agenda of forest fire abatement and they have put great emphasis on taking precautionary measures to tackle upcoming forest fires,” said Zerefos, who consults with ministers.

The government has bolstered the firefighting service, including adding more water dropping planes and helicopters and advancing technology with drones that can spot fires at the start so that resources can be marshaled.

There’s also a law, later diluted, requiring municipalities and homeowners to clear areas of combustible materials that are the fuel for spreading the fires faster and for years were neglected, making fires worse.

Together with the Ministry of the Environment, it passed a new law earlier this year which enforces the removal of any biomass that has not been cleared from within or near forest areas with no reports how it’s being enforced.

“I think they are doing a pretty good job so far, and it remains to be seen if, together with the emergency number 112, the precautionary measures by the Greek government will result in reducing the spread of the damage from wildfires,” Zerefos said.