A new study in Environmental Research Letters says children born in Europe now face almost twice as much extreme fire weather, which has left mapmakers without a colour for the top of the scale.
New research finds children born in Europe today will face nearly twice as much extreme fire weather as their grandparents. Researchers describe the fire numbers as dull and reliable. The crisis, they say, is that the map has no colour left for the top of the scale.
A print shop in Rotterdam ran out of dark orange ink on Sunday. Staff there describe it as the worst morning in the shop's history.
The ink was going into fire weather maps for Europe. New work published in Environmental Research Letters means those maps now need a colour that does not exist.
The underlying study is simple enough. A baby born in Europe in 2025 will live through about 84% more extreme fire weather than someone born in 1950.
That comes to more than three extra years of it. Most of the rise is climate change, not longer lifespans.
Researchers say this part went smoothly. "The fire numbers were easy," said Dr Margit Hulse, who did not lead the study but sat near the people who did. "We ran them nine times. They came out the same every time. Nobody in the room was surprised. It was honestly quite a dull week."
The ninth shade
The trouble is the legend. A legend is the small box on a map that tells you what each colour means.
Europe's fire weather legend has eight colours. The eighth is a red so dark it prints as brown on ordinary paper. The new projections go straight past it.
"We are out of red," Hulse said. "There is no more red. I do not think the public has absorbed what that means."
A child born this year will see a colour we have not invented yet. We are asking governments to take the legend seriously.
Corine Vasterling chairs a standards group for map colours. She said members met for nine hours and went home without a decision.
Three options remain. Black, a flashing square, and leaving the box blank. Black was ruled out because black already means "no data".
Asked about the children in the study, Vasterling said the children were not her remit. "They will be fine or they will not," she said. "The legend has to work either way."
Hulse said her team will keep watching the fire weather. She expects it to behave exactly as the model says, which she called the boring outcome.
The print shop has ordered more orange. It arrives in nine weeks.
