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Climate change heightens the risk of fire danger and the frequency and intensity of wildfires. Wildfire smoke particles negatively affect human health and have proven to be more toxic to human health than particles from other sources. Exposure is associated with irritation of the eye, nose, throat, and skin, and an increased risk of longer-term adverse cardiovascular and respiratory outcomes.

This indicator measures wildfire risk, PM2.5 exposure and health impacts:

  • Annual average population-weighted wildfire risk was estimated from the daily Fire Weather Index (FWI). The FWI is a unitless index that indicates the potential danger of wildfires based on weather conditions affecting fuel dryness, fire intensity, and fire spread.
  • Population exposure to daily wildfire-related PM2.5 was estimated by combining spatial wildfire PM2.5 concentration data with population and NUTS2 regional data.
  • Mortality attributable to wildfire-related PM2.5 exposure, estimated by combining daily wildfire PM2.5 exposure, relative risk estimates, and mortality data. These inputs were used to calculate the population attributable fraction and estimate the number of deaths attributable to wildfire PM2.5 exposure for each NUTS 2 region.

    • Interpretation of results

    Annual average wildfire-PM2.5 exposure

    No distinct increasing or decreasing trends in wildfire PM2.5 exposure between 2003 and 2024 were identified in Europe.

    Annual wildfire PM2.5 attributable mortality

    Between 2003 and 2024, an annual average of 1.79 deaths (95% CI: 1.35–2.25) per 100,000 inhabitants in Europe were attributable to wildfire-PM2.5 exposure.

    Caveats

    Population data is available for limited set of years, therefore, linear interpolation for each year where population data was not available was estimated.

    Fire emission system suffers from omission errors, such as cloud obscuration and limited sensitivity of the instrument causing omission of small fires.

    Date of publication:

    2026

    Keywords:
    health, Wildfire
    Climate impacts:

    Wildfires

    Adaptation Approaches:

    Observations and Scenarios, Vulnerability Assessment

    Sectors:

    Health

    Geographic characterisation:

    Europe

    Health impact:

    Wildfires

    Wildfire risk

    Exposure to daily wildfire-related PM2

    Mortality attributable to wildfire-related PM2.5 exposure

    Reference information

    Websites:
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(24)00055-0/fulltext
    https://www.lancetcountdown.org/europe/
    Source:

    Publication:

    Kriit H, Chen-Xu J, Semenza J et al., 2026, 'The 2026 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: narrowing window for decisive health action'. The Lancet Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(26)00025-3


    Data sources:

    1. Population data: GEOSTAT population grids for Europe with 1km spatial resolution.
    2. Mortality data: Eurostat all-cause mortality by sex and age groups
    3. Exposure-response function: daily wildfire PM2.5 and all-cause mortality :

      4. Alari A, Ballester J, Milà C, et al. Quantifying the short-term mortality effects of wildfire smoke in Europe: a multicountry epidemiological study in 654 contiguous regions. The Lancet Planetary Health 2025; 9(8): 101296-.

    4. PM2.5 data: Finnish Meteorological Institute, Fire smoke dispersion forecasts, Integrated System for wild-land Fires (IS4FIRES) and the System for Integrated modelling of Atmospheric composition (SILAM) models
    5. Fire danger data: worldwide used Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) computed from ERA5 Land Reanalysis data (Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)) for the period 1980-2024 with a 0.5º spatial resolution

    Link to repository with code:

    Mila, C., 2024 Wildfire smoke indicators for the Lancet Countdown Europe 2024 edition. https://github.com/carlesmila/LCDE2024_wildfires

    Contributor:
    Lancet Countdown in Europe

    Published in Climate-ADAPT: Sep 4, 2026

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    Exclusion of liability
    This translation is generated by eTranslation, a machine translation tool provided by the European Commission.