Firefighters throughout southern Europe and northern Africa have been battling intense wildfires this week as areas throughout the area have skilled record-setting temperature spikes.

Wildfires have cropped up in Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, Turkey, and Morocco over the previous week, forcing hundreds of individuals to evacuate and destroying hundreds of acres of forest together with properties and buildings. The unusually intense (and early) starting of the European fireplace season comes after the continent skilled a sizzling and really dry spring, and whereas the area is at the moment experiencing excessive heatwaves for the second time this summer season.

“The [European] heatwave has been made more likely due to climate change,” Mark McCarthy on the UK Met Office told the Financial Times.