The status and challenge of global fire modelling
Biomass burning impacts vegetation dynamics, biogeochemical cycling, atmospheric chemistry, and climate, with sometimes deleterious socio-economic impacts. Under future climate projections it is often expected that the risk of wildfires will increase. Our ability to predict the magnitude and geograp...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2016-06-01
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| Series: | Biogeosciences |
| Online Access: | http://www.biogeosciences.net/13/3359/2016/bg-13-3359-2016.pdf |
| Summary: | Biomass burning impacts vegetation dynamics,
biogeochemical cycling, atmospheric chemistry, and climate, with sometimes
deleterious socio-economic impacts. Under future climate projections it is
often expected that the risk of wildfires will increase. Our ability to
predict the magnitude and geographic pattern of future fire impacts rests on
our ability to model fire regimes, using either well-founded empirical
relationships or process-based models with good predictive skill. While a
large variety of models exist today, it is still unclear which type of model
or degree of complexity is required to model fire adequately at regional to
global scales. This is the central question underpinning the creation of the
Fire Model Intercomparison Project (FireMIP), an international initiative to
compare and evaluate existing global fire models against benchmark data sets
for present-day and historical conditions. In this paper we review how fires
have been represented in fire-enabled dynamic global vegetation
models (DGVMs) and give an overview of the
current state of the art in fire-regime modelling. We indicate which
challenges still remain in global fire modelling and stress the need for a
comprehensive model evaluation and outline what lessons may be learned from
FireMIP. |
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| ISSN: | 1726-4170 1726-4189 |