Data from: Climate change will increase forest disturbances in Europe throughout the 21^st century

Wildfires, insect outbreaks, and storms cause large pulses of tree mortality. Climate change amplifies these forest disturbances, yet their future magnitude and extent remain uncertain. Here, we simulate future forest disturbance regimes at 100m resolution across Europe, using a deep learning-based simulation framework. Our results show that forest disturbances will continue to increase throughout the 21st century, withthe disturbed area more than doubling relative to the recent past under an unabated continuation of climate change. Wildfires are the main agent driving future disturbance change. Changing disturbances result in an increase in young forests, substantially altering Europe’s forest demography. Because of their profound implications for forest carbon storage and the habitat value of forest ecosystems, disturbances should be a priority of forest policy and management.