Strong southerly winds carried the dust from the Sahara Desert, giving the atmosphere of the Greek capital a Martian-like filter in the last hours of daylight. The skies are predicted to clear on Wednesday as winds shift and move the dust, with temperatures dipping. On Tuesday, the daily high in parts of the southern island of Crete topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), more than 20 degrees C higher than what was registered in much of northern Greece. The strong southerly winds over the past few days have also fanned unseasonal early wildfires in the country’s south. The fire service said Tuesday evening that a total 25 wildfires broke out across the country in the past 24 hours. Three people were arrested on the Aegean Sea resort island of Paros on suspicion of accidentally starting a scrub blaze on Monday, it added. No significant damage or injuries were reported, and the fire was quickly contained. Another blaze that broke out on Crete near a naval base was brought under control Tuesday. Greece suffers devastating, and often deadly, forest blazes every summer, and last year the country recorded the European Union’s largest wildfire in more than two decades. Persistent drought combined with high spring temperatures has raised fears of a particularly challenging period for firefighters in the coming months.  

The deal passed by Parliament is to buy seven DHC-515 aircraft from the Canadian Commercial Corp for 361 million euros ($392 million). The aircraft, purchased as part of a revamp of Greece's ageing fleet, will be delivered between 2027 and 2030, according to the agreement. The new aircraft can carry bigger quantities of water to dump on affected areas compared with the country's Canadair fleet, and fly for longer. 2 of the jets will be part of an EU RescEU reserve program, which means that Greece can lend them to other EU countries in emergencies. Summer wildfires have long been common in Greece, but rising temperatures and drought have made them more frequent and bigger and raised questions about the government's ability to stem the damage. Fires last year destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of land in the northeast. The deadliest blaze on record killed 104 people outside Athens in 2018. The purchase of the aircraft is part of a 2.1 billion-euro-scheme, mostly funded by the EU, under which Greece will receive firefighting equipment including drones, fire detectors, fire engines and meteorological stations. ($1 = 0.9217 euros)  

Speaking during an international ocean conference in Athens, Theodoros Skylakakis said scientific studies to determine details such as which species will be protected and what measures must be taken will be completed and implemented by year’s end. “Real protection needs to be backed by real science,” Skylakakis said. The creation of the park in the Aegean has irked Greece’s neighbor and regional rival Turkey, which has accused Athens of exploiting environmental issues to push a geopolitical agenda. Greece’s foreign ministry retorted that Ankara was “politicizing a clearly environmental issue.” The NATO allies have been at odds for decades over a variety of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean. Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ’s ruling party, said on Wednesday that Turkey would “not allow” the creation of marine parks in the Aegean and called on Greece to abandon plans that would “harm” efforts to improve ties. Relations have been improving over the past year following a period of heightened tensions that saw the countries’ warships face off in the eastern Mediterranean. “We consider this a step that sabotages the normalization process and that this unilateral approach is an exploitation of environmental sensitivities,” Celik said. “We would like to remind Greece once again that it should not deviate from the path of diplomacy, that no steps that would harm normalization should be taken and that Turkey will in no way allow actions toward the declaration of marine parks in the Aegean Sea,” he said. The park in the Aegean will have a series of rocky islets at its core and aims to protect seabirds, covering more than 8,000 square kilometers (3,088 square miles) or just over 6.6% of Greece’s territorial waters. The park in the Ionian Sea in western Greece will focus on the protection of marine mammals and extend over 14,000 square kilometers (over 5,400 square miles) from north of the island of Kefallonia to Antikythira in the south, covering 11% of Greek territorial waters. A new system to monitor the parks that will include the use of drones, satellites and artificial intelligence will be ready by 2026, Skylakakis said, with monitoring by traditional methods until then. The parks’ creation was part of Greece’s pledges during the Our Ocean Conference. Other measures include a ban on bottom trawling in national marine parks by 2026 and in all marine protected areas by 2030, reducing plastic pollution and mapping marine habitats of protected areas. Nearly 120 countries and 20 international and regional organizations attended the two-day conference, raising $11.3 billion in more than 460 commitments for marine-related environmental protection, organizers said.  

Greece, which includes thousands of islands and which has the longest Mediterranean coastline of any littoral state, said last week it plans to create two marine parks, one in the Ionian Sea and one in the Aegean Sea, as part of the initiatives. "Quietly but methodically, Greece is playing a leading role in the defence against dramatic climate changes, which are proven to affect every region and every activity," Mitsotakis said in an article published in Kathimerini newspaper. Greece plans to present its national strategy on marine biodiversity protection at the "Our Ocean" conference, which Athens will host this year and which will be attended by about 120 countries. More than 400 new commitments amounting to $10 billion will be announced during the conference, said a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month that ocean temperatures hit a record high in February, in a dataset that goes back to 1979. Overfishing and plastic pollution are also major threats to oceans. Plastics entering the world's oceans could nearly triple by 2040 if no further action is taken, research has shown. It counts 600 types of native corals in 2000 species of fish. Greece wants to reduce plastic litter in the water by 50% and microplastics by 30% by 2030, the government official said. The Greek marine parks, whose boundaries will be defined after scientific research by early 2025, will cover 32% of Greece's waters, Mitsotakis said. Greece has legislated the expansion of marine protected areas to 30% of its territorial waters by 2030. The plan for a marine park in the Aegean Sea has irritated neighbouring Turkey, which said last week that it was not willing to accept a possible "fait accompli on geographical features whose status is disputed". In response, Greece accused Turkey of "politicising a purely environmental issue". NATO allies Greece and Turkey have long been at odds over a range of issues including maritime boundaries and claims over their continental shelves in the Mediterranean. Mitsotakis said other initiatives underway include campaigns to curb plastic pollution, constructing charging stations at 12 ports for electric vessels and setting up a monitoring system for protected marine areas because fishing practices that damage the seabed will be banned. Greece wants to ban bottom trawling in all marine protected areas by 2030, the official said. ($1 = 0.9387 euros)

Greece, signalling its intention to contribute actively to the international challenges of the global climate crisis, is taking initiatives to support the protection of the oceans and hosting the 9th international "Our Oceans Conference" (OOC-9), which will be held in Athens on April 16-17th, 2024, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, "Our main goal is for this conference to produce tangible results. Not only to discuss environmental protection, but also to proceed with tangible actions and commitments," Hellenic Minister of Foreign Affairs George Gerapetritis said at a recent press conference. Greece will accompany the hosting of this international organisation with 20 commitments for the protection of Greek seas and the sustainability of economic activities. Commitments will be announced on the day of the conference, and some will be immediate, while some will extend to 2030. The first ones already announced concern the immediate passing of legislation establishing two large national marine parks in the Ionian and the Aegean, which will be among the largest in the Mediterranean.

Volunteers and firefighters race to pull them to safety through clouds of red smoke, as a drone buzzing overhead sends live video of the rescue to a national coordination center. Members of the baptism party are played by actors hired for the day by the Fire Service and the regional authority, and smoke flares are used to mimic fire conditions. The exercise held Thursday and multiple drills planned this month have taken on added urgency ahead of the fire season that officially starts May 1. Temperatures touched 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) in late March and large wildfires are already breaking out weeks earlier than expected. “Due to climate, conditions have changed. Everything in nature is dry now and it’s very easy to catch fire. So we have to be ready to deal with it,” said Loukia Kefalogianni, the deputy regional government of the capital’s North Attica region. To cope with the crisis, Greece is fast-tracking a 2.1 billion euro ($2.3 billion) program to upgrade its fleet of water tankers and create an artificial intelligence-driven sensor network to detect smoke in the early stages of a fire.

The Mediterranean country has been buffeted by floods and wildfires in recent years, raising concerns about its ability to defend against climate change-related weather events. In September, Storm Daniel dumped record rains, which burst rivers and flooded tens of thousands of acres in the central region of Thessaly, which accounts for 25% of Greece's agricultural produce and 5% of GDP. Dutch-based agricultural firm HVA, hired by the government to assess the damage, has drafted a plan that recommends moving dykes further away from rivers, deepening riverbeds and banning further construction on floodplains. Despite the rains, HVA said there was a danger of water shortages in Thessaly as farmers extract groundwater for irrigation. It recommended planting fruit and vegetables, which are less water-intensive than cotton and other crops. Thessaly region faces an annual water deficit of approximately 500 million cubic meters and this quantity will increase due to climate change, it said. "These remedies will hopefully help to not only avert future flash floods and solve Thessaly's water scarcity issue but catapult its agricultural sector to a more competitive level," HVA said. The cost of the plan, which was submitted for public consultation last week and seen by Reuters, was about 4.5 billion euros ($4.88 billion). The government will soon decide which actions it will implement, determining the final cost, a government official told Reuters. HVA also suggested tripling the size of Lake Karla, which was drained in the 1960s to allow for more cotton and maize production. Thousands of farmers, already angry about rising costs, work that land today. The public consultation on the proposals ends on March 29. ($1 = 0.9226 Euros)

From December to February, the average peak temperature was 11.3 degrees Celsius (52.3 Farenheit), 1.8 degrees above the average top winter temperatures from 1960-2024, soaring as much as 7-8 degrees higher in some parts of northern Greece, according to the National Observatory of Athens, which analyzed data by the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service. Indeed, it was the warmest winter since records began in 1936, and follows a trend: 6 of Greece's balmiest winters have been recorded in the last 10 years. "Temperatures were above normal on most days, with only small intervals of cold weather," Konstantinos Lagouvardos, research director at the national observatory, told Reuters. "This is a new reality and we must take it seriously. Climate change is undoubtedly here." The data is a concern for Greece, which is one of the most climate-impacted countries in Europe, where wildfires killed at least 20 people last summer. In the autumn, torrential record-breaking rains wiped out homes, cattlelands and crops, raising concerns about the continent's fragile climate defences. The country's ski resorts saw lower-than-usual snowfall this winter. The warm weather may be adverse news for farmers, too, whose crops, including Greece's famed olives, benefit from cold winters and a flowering season in spring. "The lack of a proper winter will create problems for sure," because the trees are flowering too soon, said Michalis Antonopoulos, head of the farmers' cooperative of Kalamata, the main producer of Greek olive oil. Globally too, last year was the planet's hottest on record and likely in the last 100,000 years, according to Copernicus. Scientists said the warm winter in Greece, together with low rainfall and low humidity, could mean more wildfires in the summer. Such blazes are frequent in Greece but have been made worse in recent years because of extreme heat that scientists link to climate change. "Of course this raises the risk," said Christos Zerefos, a leading climate expert and head of Greece's Research Center for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology. "From now on, every month that comes, every winter that comes, will be the warmest ever," Zerefos said.  

His small plot, near Lake Karla, is among tens of thousands of acres of cotton fields, almond trees and grazing lands that were wiped out by unprecedented flooding last year in one of Greece's key breadbaskets. 5 months on, much of the area - and a lot of expensive equipment - remain underwater. A pumping station meant to stop flooding is marooned in a shallow lake. Pelicans and herons, previously uninterested in the once dry plain, swoop overhead. "I could never have imagined I would have to board a boat to get to see my land," said Evangelinos as he drifted by his sodden trees. "Work of a lifetime ruined, gone in three, four days of rain." The situation has fuelled anger among farmers who, like many across Europe, have found their livelihoods under threat from rising costs and climate change, and created a headache for governments expected to pay the bill. Farmers from India to France and Poland have taken to the streets in recent days, bemoaning competition from abroad, a lack of government support and low prices. Thousands descended on central Athens on Tuesday calling for more aid. Greece has been buffeted by extreme weather too. Wildfires ripped through the north last year, then Storm Daniel dumped 18 months of rain in 4 days in September, raising questions about the Mediterranean country's ability to deal with an increasingly erratic climate. It also offers a warning of what other countries further north may face in future. Daniel and another storm, Elias, flooded about 35,000 acres near Lake Karla in Thessaly plain, which accounts for 25% of Greece's agricultural produce and 5% of GDP. Some 30,000 farmers were impacted across the province. Lake Karla had been drained in the 1960s to increase farmland and a small part of it was recovered in recent years, only for 450-500 million cubic metres of water to rush back in during the floods. The area near the Lake has a small man-made outlet, and HVA, a Dutch agricultural company hired by the government to assess the damage, said it could take up to two years for the water to subside. Evangelinos had just picked a one-tonne batch of almonds before the rain came and washed it away. He would normally expect 10 tonnes over the season, about 20,000 euros worth, but managed just 40% of that. Now he is not sure how he will pay for his two daughters' university expenses. "It's very sad. Because those trees you see now being 20 and 30 years old, you grow them out of a small branch." FARMERS' STRUGGLE Responding to farmers' protests over rising costs, Greece's government has offered discounts on power bills and extended a tax rebate for diesel. It's not clear if the government, cash-strapped after a decade-long financial crisis, will offer more. In Thessaly, farmers have so far received 150 million euros ($162 million) in compensation for the flooding. The government said another 110 million euros will come in July. Many say they want more. Farmers from near Lake Karla attended Wednesday's protests in Athens. One tractor parked in the central square bore a placard that read: "Karla. 180,000 stremmas underwater," referring to a land measurement used in Greece. "We want our fields back." Local authorities have proposed speeding up the recovery by using floating machines to pump out the water as early as April in one area, said Thessaly governor Dimitris Kouretas. "There are several thousands of families living here. Do we want them to go?" he said. Some already have. Vangelis Peristeropoulos, 35, a father of 2, lost nearly all his 640 pigs and sheep in Stefanovikeio, another town near the lake. He took a job as a truck driver at the port city of Volos in November to make ends meet. "When we saw the catastrophe and that there was nothing we could do, we looked for another job because expenses kept running." Evangelinos is staying put for now. He says once the soil dries out, experts will have to analyse it and make sure it is fit for cultivation. He hopes to uproot damaged trees and plant new ones. "What I want is to set foot on the muddy land and start cultivating all over again."

The new plans come after massive fires last year killed more than 20 people and decimated vast tracts of forest and farmland, including a blaze in northeastern Greece which raged out of control for about two weeks, growing into the largest wildfire recorded in a European Union country since the European Forest Fire Information System began keeping records in 2000. The government has pointed to a changing climate and extreme weather that has included drier winters and more frequent summer heatwaves as contributing to an increased risk of forest fires. The new plans were presented by the head of the fire department, Lt. Gen. Theodoros Vagias, to coincide with International Day of Forests on March 21st. “This is a big fight for us. It’s climate crisis, it’s a time of need,” Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said, speaking at the presentation. “We’re going to have a huge effort this summer to do the best of what we can do, to the best of our abilities, in order to be able to protect Greeks, protect tourists, protect their houses, and protect, of course, the wildlife and our forests.” The changes include having water-dropping aircraft take off in the initial stages of the outbreak of a wildfire instead of waiting for a request for air support from ground firefighting crews once the blaze has already spread, and having more fire trucks deploy in the initial stages of any wildfire. The number of specialized forest firefighting crews will increase from 6 to 16, including 10 that will be able to deploy rapidly by aircraft, while forestry units will be deployed on the ground with firefighters for better coordination during fires. Greece is also seeking to increase its water-dropping aircraft fleet with seven new Canadair planes over the next few years. The aircraft are the main means of aerial firefighting used in Greece and several other European countries, and Greek lawmakers were expected to approve a bill Thursday regarding the purchase. The procurement is for 5 new planes with a 6-ton water capacity, along with 2 additional aircraft to be obtained through the European Union’s civil protection RescEU program that assists member states in the handling of disasters, government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis said Thursday. Marinakis said the first 2 planes would be delivered to Greece in 2027, one more in 2028 and another in 2029, with the remaining three arriving in 2030. Hellenic Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is scheduled to travel to Canada on Sunday for meetings that are expected to include the signing of the Canadair deal.

The action comes 5 months after the worst rains in Greece flooded its fertile Thessaly plain, devastating crops and livestock and raising questions about the Mediterranean country's ability to deal with an increasingly erratic climate. Under EU rules, countries need to update once in six years their flood management plans, a set of measures aimed to help them mitigate the risks of floods on human lives, the environment and economic activities. Greece was formally notified by the Commission last year that it should finalise its management plans but the country has so far failed to review, adopt or report its flood risk management plans, the Commission said in a statement. "The Commission considers that efforts by the Greek authorities have, to date, been insufficient and is therefore referring Greece to the Court of Justice of the European Union," it added. The Hellenic environment ministry said the European Commission has been notified that the country's plans will be reviewed by early summer. The Commission last month sued Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain, Ireland, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia for failing to comply with their respective reporting obligations.  

On Tuesday, the European Commission published its plan for managing risks exacerbated by climate change, such as floods and wildfires.  The strategy aims to strengthen the bloc’s ability to adapt to the climate crisis and build resilience against the increased risk of climate-related problems such as “ droughts, floods, forest fires, diseases, crop failures or heatwaves”, a Commission press release said. Rather than mitigating climate change, the plan “ is about the far-less talked about part of climate action, which is adaptation”, said EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. “ What we are talking about here is building climate-resilient societies and economies,” he said at a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday. Hoekstra pointed to recent disasters in the EU - wildfires in Greece, flooding in Slovenia and a storm in Scandinavia - to underline the urgency.  European Commission Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal, Maroš Šefčovič, said that “ we will be very much focusing on how to use our climate, diplomacy and outreach to all the countries in need of... help and assistance and technology-sharing... but also to the biggest polluters who could do more”.  Brussels calls on Member States to strengthen governance and coordination, better analyse the interconnections between different risks, adapt infrastructure planning and improve public and private financing. In general, it calls on them to develop proactive management of adaptation to the climate crisis. The Commission’s plan came after the first ever climate risk assessment by the European Environment Agency (EEA), published on Monday, which said the EU is inadequately prepared. The report warned of “ catastrophic” consequences if Europe failed to take urgent action to adapt to risks posed by climate change. The EEA assessment called on EU member states to work together at a regional and local level to tackle climate change risks with precautionary measures. According to the EEA report, “ Europe is the fastest-warming continent in the world”. The south is on fire The dangers include fires, water shortages and their effects on agricultural production, while low-lying coastal regions face threats of flooding, erosion and saltwater intrusion. Areas in southern Europe are most at risk, the EEA report said. “ Some regions of Europe are hotspots for multiple climate risks. Southern Europe is particularly exposed to the risk of forest fires and the impacts of heat and water scarcity on agricultural production, outdoor work and human health,” it added. The report, which identifies 36 climate risks in the EU, states that “ heat-related risks have already reached critical levels in southern Europe”, given the “ more frequent and more intense” high temperatures in this region. This includes countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.  The high temperatures have already led to dangerous forest fires in Portugal. One of the most lethal events was the forest fire in Pedrógão Grande in central Portugal in June 2017, which caused 64 deaths and around 200 people to be displaced. The fires entered several cities, towns and villages and ended up destroying dozens of houses and industries.