Greece is preparing to confront another wildfire season by deploying a record number of firefighters, the climate minister said Thursday, after a succession of previous destructive fires has ravaged big parts of the country.
Some 18,000 firefighters will be available this year, which is the highest number on record, assisted by thousands of volunteers, Civil Protection and Climate Crisis Minister Yiannis Kefaloyiannis said. Also, some 80 drones with thermal cameras -nearly double last year’s number- will be available to accelerate the detection of wildfires.
“We shouldn’t be fooled by the fact that climate conditions this year have seemed to be a little milder than in previous years,” he said. “The bad scenarios lie ahead.”
According to the World Meteorological Organization, weather across the globe is becoming increasingly unstable and extreme due to the impact of climate change, with 2024 being the hottest year ever recorded.
In Greece, summers have become increasingly hot and dry with temperatures reaching even 45 degrees Celsius. At the same time, rapidly changing strong winds are fueling more destructive wildfires that are difficult to be put under control. Last August, during Greece’s hottest summer on record, a woman died and thousands of hectares of land were burnt when a wildfire swept through Athens’ northern suburbs.
Each year, Greece depends on about 2,500 seasonal firefighters who battle wildfires alongside the permanent ones. It is not known how many will be having their short-term contracts renewed in May, ahead of the wildfire season, which starts on May 1. Hundreds of seasonal firefighters, whose contracts ended at the end of 2024 and were left unemployed, demonstrated in downtown Athens in October, demanding permanent positions.
Moreover, Greece has earmarked some 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) to buy new aircraft, meteorological stations and drones to improve its capabilities against wildfires and other natural disasters.
How climate change is impacting Greece, which in turn fuels destructive wildfires
Greece is at the epicenter of climate change and in 2024 the country not only witnessed its hottest recorded year ever, it also saw daily temperatures above average spanning throughout the year, a 2025 study revealed.
According to Climatebook, a Greek scientific news portal on weather and climate, scientists analyzed meteorological data and found that the average temperature in Greece for 2024 was above the daily average recorded between 1991-2020 during 77 percent of the days. That means that 282 of the 366 days of the year saw increases.
Greece started to officially keep temperature records in 1890. In the past few decades, scientists have been recording a steady increase in temperatures across the country due to climate change.
Climatebook’s scientific team also found that the winter season of 2023-2024 was the warmest ever recorded in Greece, while 2024 had been warmer by 0.7 degrees Celsius compared to 2023.
According to scientists, climate change is clearly increasing fire conditions. Warmer temperatures, they argue, dry out forests, which make a fire more likely to spread. It can also cause more vegetation to grow, which provides more “fuel” for the fire.
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