Wildfires that have been tearing through forests in France and Spain, forcing residents to flee and filling the sky with smoke, are starting to ease, but firefighters from across Europe are still battling the flames, and there are concerns that intense heatwaves raise the risk of more blazes breaking out.

In southwest France’s Gironde region and the mountainous Var department, massive fires have scorched tens of thousands of hectares before stabilising. Officials say the country’s largest blaze since 1949 is now under control but still not fully extinguished.

In central Spain, fires that burned through tens of thousands of hectares near Madrid have eased, allowing many evacuees to return home, even as crews battle flare-ups and new hotspots in provinces including Leon and Caceres.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, and scientists warn that rising temperatures, prolonged drought and strong winds are turning southern Europe, especially France and Spain, into a far more flammable landscape, with the number of summer days featuring fire-prone conditions more than doubling since the early 1980s.