Storyline attribution of fire weather during the 2025 Mediterranean summer

Abstract The Mediterranean region is a climate change hotspot where increasing temperatures and changing hydroclimate are intensifying wildfire risk. The extreme fire season of summer 2025 provides a timely case to assess the role of anthropogenic climate change in shaping fire-conducive atmospheric conditions. Here, we apply a spectrally nudged storyline approach to conditionally attribute the thermodynamic contribution of climate change to the Fire Weather Index during July–August 2025, for past and future climate states. We find a robust increase in fire weather across the Mediterranean under climate change. The strongest and most spatially coherent signal is driven by temperature increases, while reductions in relative humidity and precipitation further amplify fire-conducive conditions in specific regions. These results demonstrate that climate change has substantially intensified the meteorological conditions conducive to wildfires during the 2025 Mediterranean summer. More broadly, this study highlights the value of conditional storyline attribution for linking physically driven climate changes to impact-relevant metrics such as fire weather.