: The World Has Been On Fire For the Past Month. Here’s What It Looks Like #WorldNEWS Flames light up hillsides in British Columbia. Smoke swells over highways into Athens. A swimming pool in California

The World Has Been On Fire For the Past Month. Here’s What It Looks Like #WorldNEWS
Flames light up hillsides in British Columbia. Smoke swells over highways into Athens. A swimming pool in California is surrounded by charred rubble. Thick forests in Siberia lie shriveled and brown.
Countries across the northern hemisphere this summer are experiencing the worst wildfires in years of recorded history, with large swaths of land and entire towns in Europe, North America and Russia consumed by flames since the start of July.
Though many of these countries are used to summer fire seasons, climate change is making the hot, dry conditions that allow fires to catch and spread more common and more intense.
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In parts of the western U. S. , a summer of intense heat waves has arrived on the back of a weak rainy season, as a two-year-long drought stretches on. In mid-July, fires broke out in parts of Oregon and California, together consuming more than 230,000 hectares, part of a nationwide toll of over 1 million hectares burned so far in wildfires this year.

Yasin Akgul—AFP/Getty ImagesFirefighters battle a wildfire in Mugla, Marmaris district, Turkey, on Aug. 2. Turkeys struggles against its deadliest wildfires in decades come as a blistering heatwave grips southeastern Europe.

Dimitar Dilkoff—AFP/Getty ImagesA couple rides a pedal boat as smoke from nearby forest fires hangs over the city of Yakutsk, in Sakha (Yakutia), Russia on July 27.

David Ryder—ReutersFire retardant dropped from an airplane falls to the ground near the Chuweah Creek Fire as wildfires devastate Nespelem, Wash. on July 14.
In early July, the Canadian province of British Columbia became an icon for the extremes of destruction that wildfires can bring: the small town of Lytton briefly became one of the hottest places on earth, obliterating Canada’s heat records with temperatures topping 49. 5° C (121. 1° F). Then a fierce wildfire tore through town, destroying 90% of its buildings and leaving residents minutes to escape.
This month, southern Europe’s Mediterranean countries are sweltering under one of the worst heat waves to hit the region in decades. The temperature in one town in northern Greece reached 47. 1°C (116. 8°F) on Aug. 4, not far below Europe’s all-time record of 48°C (118. 4°F). Fires in the south of the country hit residential areas on the outskirts of the capital, Athens, forcing people to flee into the city center as huge smoke plumes followed them.
In Turkey, the most severe fires on record have burned through more than 11,000 hectares of forest, killing eight people, most of them in the southern town of Manavgat. The devastation has led to anger at Turkey’s government, which has struggled to respond to the flames, admitting it has no working firefighting planes.