(AFP) – Climate change induced by human activities has made the heat and drought twice as likely that fade on March’s fires in South Korea, the deadliest in the country’s recent history, according to researchers’ analysis on Thursday.
These forest fires have killed at least 31 people in the south-east of the country and destroy historic sites including a millennial temple.
Before this episode, precipitation lower than the average had been found for several months in the affected region, then struck by strong winds, according to local officials. In addition, South Korea has experienced its hottest year in 2024 since the start of the surveys.
The weather conditions conducive to fires have been “made twice as likely and approximately 15% more intense by climate change”, compared to a climate that would not have been warmed by humans, indicates the World Weather attribution report, a network of researchers who study links between climate change and extreme weather phenomena.
The fires “were made much more likely by climate change,” concludes clear Barnes, a researcher from the Imperial College London affiliated with the WWA network.
Network methods make it possible to compare the current climate, approximately 1.3 ° C warm than at the pre-industrial era, to a hypothetical climate without warming. Climate change is above all caused by the combustion of oil, gas and coal, which generates carbon dioxide warming the atmosphere.
In March, the South Korean firefighters had found very difficult to circumscribe with their conventional methods the lights, the wind pushing the flames of pine pines on dry hills.
“These unprecedented conditions have shown the limits of extinction systems, even well established,” added the report. “Faced with fires probably called upon to exceed control capacities, the emphasis must be placed on the proactive risk reduction”.
More than 62% of the South Korean territory consists of forests, recalls the document, which underlines the dense forest zone on the East Coast and in the mountainous regions of the country.
About 11% of forest areas are surrounding inhabited areas, according to the study, which recalls that they “count for almost 30% of the forest fires documented between 2016 and 2022”.
March fires highlighted the country’s demographic crisis: its rural regions are not very populated and are mainly in the elderly. Many of the deaths of fires were the elderly.
Other fires have affected the country since then, especially in the demilitarized area (DMZ) separating the North of the South.
This week, more than 2,000 people had to evacuate their homes due to fires that occurred in several parts of Daegu, in the south-east of the country.
