Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area
Wildfire is an integral part of the Earth system, but at the same time it can pose serious threats to human society and to certain types of terrestrial ecosystems. Meteorological conditions are a key driver of wildfire activity and extent, which led to the emergence of the use of fire danger indices...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IOP Publishing
2022-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1 |
| _version_ | 1797747020783419392 |
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| author | Manolis Grillakis Apostolos Voulgarakis Anastasios Rovithakis Konstantinos D Seiradakis Aristeidis Koutroulis Robert D Field Matthew Kasoar Athanasios Papadopoulos Mihalis Lazaridis |
| author_facet | Manolis Grillakis Apostolos Voulgarakis Anastasios Rovithakis Konstantinos D Seiradakis Aristeidis Koutroulis Robert D Field Matthew Kasoar Athanasios Papadopoulos Mihalis Lazaridis |
| author_sort | Manolis Grillakis |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Wildfire is an integral part of the Earth system, but at the same time it can pose serious threats to human society and to certain types of terrestrial ecosystems. Meteorological conditions are a key driver of wildfire activity and extent, which led to the emergence of the use of fire danger indices that depend solely on weather conditions. The Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is a widely used fire danger index of this kind. Here, we evaluate how well the FWI, its components, and the climate variables from which it is derived, correlate with observation-based burned area (BA) for a variety of world regions. We use a novel technique, according to which monthly BA are grouped by size for each Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) pyrographic region. We find strong correlations of BA anomalies with the FWI anomalies, as well as with the underlying deviations from their climatologies for the four climate variables from which FWI is estimated, namely, temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind. We quantify the relative sensitivity of the observed BA to each of the four climate variables, finding that this relationship strongly depends on the pyrographic region and land type. Our results indicate that the BA anomalies strongly correlate with FWI anomalies at a GFED region scale, compared to the strength of the correlation with individual climate variables. Additionally, among the individual climate variables that comprise the FWI, relative humidity and temperature are the most influential factors that affect the observed BA. Our results support the use of the composite fire danger index FWI, as well as its sub-indices, the Build-Up Index (BUI) and the Initial Spread Index (ISI), comparing to single climate variables, since they are found to correlate better with the observed forest or non-forest BA, for the most regions across the globe. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:45:09Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-7efde1a513ec4ea39c106b795696b501 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:45:09Z |
| publishDate | 2022-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-7efde1a513ec4ea39c106b795696b5012023-08-09T15:28:20ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262022-01-0117404502110.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1Climate drivers of global wildfire burned areaManolis Grillakis0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4228-1803Apostolos Voulgarakis1Anastasios Rovithakis2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6072-5298Konstantinos D Seiradakis3Aristeidis Koutroulis4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2999-7575Robert D Field5Matthew Kasoar6Athanasios Papadopoulos7Mihalis Lazaridis8School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete , Chania, Greece; Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London , London, United KingdomSchool of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete , Chania, Greece; Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London , London, United Kingdom; Department of Physics, Imperial College London , London, United KingdomSchool of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete , Chania, Greece; Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London , London, United KingdomSchool of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete , Chania, Greece; Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London , London, United KingdomSchool of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete , Chania, GreeceDepartment of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University , New York, NY, United States of America; NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies , New York, NY, United States of AmericaLeverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society, Imperial College London , London, United Kingdom; Department of Physics, Imperial College London , London, United KingdomSchool of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete , Chania, GreeceSchool of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete , Chania, GreeceWildfire is an integral part of the Earth system, but at the same time it can pose serious threats to human society and to certain types of terrestrial ecosystems. Meteorological conditions are a key driver of wildfire activity and extent, which led to the emergence of the use of fire danger indices that depend solely on weather conditions. The Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is a widely used fire danger index of this kind. Here, we evaluate how well the FWI, its components, and the climate variables from which it is derived, correlate with observation-based burned area (BA) for a variety of world regions. We use a novel technique, according to which monthly BA are grouped by size for each Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) pyrographic region. We find strong correlations of BA anomalies with the FWI anomalies, as well as with the underlying deviations from their climatologies for the four climate variables from which FWI is estimated, namely, temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind. We quantify the relative sensitivity of the observed BA to each of the four climate variables, finding that this relationship strongly depends on the pyrographic region and land type. Our results indicate that the BA anomalies strongly correlate with FWI anomalies at a GFED region scale, compared to the strength of the correlation with individual climate variables. Additionally, among the individual climate variables that comprise the FWI, relative humidity and temperature are the most influential factors that affect the observed BA. Our results support the use of the composite fire danger index FWI, as well as its sub-indices, the Build-Up Index (BUI) and the Initial Spread Index (ISI), comparing to single climate variables, since they are found to correlate better with the observed forest or non-forest BA, for the most regions across the globe.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1fire weather indexburned areaclimate sensitivity |
| spellingShingle | Manolis Grillakis Apostolos Voulgarakis Anastasios Rovithakis Konstantinos D Seiradakis Aristeidis Koutroulis Robert D Field Matthew Kasoar Athanasios Papadopoulos Mihalis Lazaridis Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area Environmental Research Letters fire weather index burned area climate sensitivity |
| title | Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area |
| title_full | Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area |
| title_fullStr | Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area |
| title_full_unstemmed | Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area |
| title_short | Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area |
| title_sort | climate drivers of global wildfire burned area |
| topic | fire weather index burned area climate sensitivity |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1 |
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