Abstract. Current trends in the Mediterranean climate, and more specifically in Greece, indicate longer and more intense summer droughts that even extend out of season. In connection to this, the frequency of forest fire occurrence and intensity is on the rise. In the present study, the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is used in order to investigate the relationship between fire risk and meteorological conditions in Greece. FWI is a meteorologically based index designed in Canada and used worldwide, including the Mediterranean Basin, to estimate fire danger in a generalised fuel type based solely on weather observations. Here, an evaluation of the index is initially performed for the Greek territory using fire observations that cover a 15 yr period. Three critical fire risk threshold values are established for the area of Greece based on daily mean meteorological data: FWI = 15, FWI = 30 and FWI = 45, increasing from the northwest to the southeast. Subsequently, a regional climate model is employed providing input for the FWI system to investigate the impacts of climate change on fire risk for two future time periods, 2021-2050 and 2071-2100, under the A1B emissions scenario. Days with critical fire risk are expected to increase by as many as 50 days per year by the end of the century.
Abstract. Recent and future changes in temperature and precipitation climate extremes are estimated using the Hadley Centre PRECIS ("Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies") climate model for the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region. The area of interest is considered vulnerable to extreme climate events as there is evidence for a temperature rise while precipitation tends to decline, suggesting likely effects on vital socioeconomic sectors in the region. Observations have been obtained for the recent period ) and used to evaluate the model output. The spatial distribution of recent temporal trends in temperature indicates strong increasing in minimum temperature over the eastern Balkan Peninsula, Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula. The rate of warming reaches 0.4-0.5 • C decade −1 in a large part of the domain, while warming is expected to be strongest in summer (0.6-0.7 • C decade −1 ) in the eastern Balkans and western Turkey. The trends in annual and summer maximum temperature are estimated at approximately 0.5 and 0.6 • C decade −1 respectively. Recent estimates do not indicate statistically significant trends in precipitation except for individual sub-regions. Results indicate a future warming trend for the study area over the last 30 years of the 21st century. Trends are estimated to be positive and statistically significant in nearly the entire region. The annual trend patterns for both minimum and maximum temperature show warming rates of approximately 0.4-0.6 • C decade −1 , with pronounced warming over the Middle Eastern countries. Summer temperatures reveal a gradual warming (0.5-0.9 • C decade −1 ) over much of the region. The model projects drying trends by 5-30 % in annual precipitation towards the end of the 21st century, with the number of wet days decreasing at the rate of 10-30 days year −1 , while heavy precipitation is likely to decrease in the high-elevation areas by 15 days year −1 .
Fire activity has significantly changed in Europe over the last decades (1980–2020s), with the emergence of summers attaining unprecedented fire prone weather conditions. Here we report a significant shift in the non-stationary relationship linking fire weather conditions and fire intensity measured in terms of CO2 emissions released during biomass burning across a latitudinal gradient of European IPCC regions. The reported trends indicate that global warming is possibly inducing an incipient change on regional fire dynamics towards increased fire impacts in Europe, suggesting that emerging risks posed by exceptional fire-weather danger conditions may progressively exceed current wildfire suppression capabilities in the next decades and impact forest carbon sinks.
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