Firefighters are tackling blazes across Europe and Russia's Far East as a prolonged heatwave and some of the highest temperatures on record dry forests andgrassland from the Adriatic to Siberia.
In Russia, emergency ministry officials said firefighters were trying to douse around 518 separate forest fires across the vast country.
In Portugal, firefighters finally put out a blaze whichravaged 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of pine forest north of the capital, Lisbon, after battling to control the inferno since Saturday.
As a precaution Poland banned access to 40 per cent of its forests.
The German government was considering action to supportfarmers who in parts of the country were facing what oneagricultural leader described as desert conditions.
"It's becoming a disaster for German agriculture," a German farmers' federation leader Gerd Sonnleitner.
"We've almost got a desert with the climate in Brandenburg at present. It's Mexico, it's Siberia."
The drought has hit 3.5 million hectares of grain fields, mainly in eastern and southern Germany, causing millions of euros of damage, he said.
The German office for marine, shipping and hydrography said water temperatures in the North Sea were recording the longest and most intensive phase of warmth in 130 years.
Italy, which has suffered power cuts due to demands onelectricity supplies due to the heat, took the unusual action of opening up the gates of Alpine reservoirs to pump water into the arid Po River in the north.
Weather forecasters warned temperatures could climb further in the next few days and hit 40C (104F) in Florence, Sardinia and in the southern toe of the peninsula.