Firefighters in France are faced with a phenomenon never seen before in the region: clouds of fire. It’s a sign of the intensity of the flames and how climate change is making them more likely.
A wave of fires swept across France and Spain, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. Before the firefighters on the front line stands the spokesman of the French firefighters’ association he told AFP is called “operational impossibility” – in other words, “a natural force beyond our control.”
As evidence of how out of control the fires in France have become, just look at the sky, where in some cases the fires have created their own weather. To create a fire cloud – which meteorologists call pyrocumulonimbus or the even more metallic-sounding cumulonimbus flammagenitus – you first need heat, of which fires have plenty.
But equally significant are dehydrated conditions near the ground and frigid, relatively humid conditions in the atmosphere. As the superheated smoke rises miles above the flames and into the frigid atmosphere, water vapor condenses around the ash particles, forming water droplets. (Yes, water vapor and water droplets are two different things.) As the air continues to rise, these water droplets eventually turn into ice crystals.
At this point, smoke and water droplets had formed a cloud, but unfortunately it was unlikely to provide any relief in the form of rain. Instead, these towering fire clouds can trigger lightning strikes that can ignite more fires and generate powerful downdrafts that reach the ground and further fan the flames. In the worst case, pyrocumulonimbus clouds can even produce tornadoes.
Pyrocumulonimbus clouds have been documented in the US, Canada and Australia, as well as several other places. However, there have been no documented fire clouds in France so far. While the country is no stranger to wildfires, the size and ferocity of this summer’s fires has been far from the norm.
According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, last week was the most devastating week for forest fires in France in the last 20 years. This is more than double the previous record for this period, which coincides with precise satellite data. This isn’t an isolated bad week either. So far, more than 220,000 acres have burned across the country, six times the annual average. That’s 61,000 acres more than the previous annual record.
If this sounds like a familiar trend, unfortunately it is. The burning of fossil fuels has warmed the planet, causing more constant and destructive fires around the world. AND 2024 study found that the incidence of extreme wildfires more than doubled worldwide between 2003 and 2023. Six of the seven most extreme years have occurred since 2016.
After a slight weekend lull as temperatures dropped, temperatures are expected to rise again above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) in France and 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Spain by the end of the week. This means firefighters will have to deal with more extreme fire weather, including the possibility of cloud formation from the fires themselves.