A study in the journal Environmental Research Letters has quantified how much more extreme fire weather today's European children are likely to face over their lifetimes. The researchers compared the experiences of someone born in 1950 with a child born in 2025, under the assumption that existing climate policies continue without strengthening.
The results show that the 2025 birth cohort would live through more than three additional years of extreme fire weather compared with the 1950 birth cohort. In relative terms, that amounts to nearly twice as much exposure to such conditions over the course of a lifetime.
The study highlights a generational gap in climate risk, with younger Europeans inheriting a substantially more fire-prone environment. The authors stress that this projection is tied to the current policy trajectory, meaning the gap could widen or narrow depending on future emissions reductions.