No abstract

[1] In this study we present an assessment of the impact of future climate change on total fire probability, burned area, and carbon (C) emissions from fires in Europe. The analysis was performed with the Community Land Model (CLM) extended with a prognostic treatment of fires that was specifically refined and optimized for application over Europe. Simulations over the 21st century are forced by five different high-resolution Regional Climate Models under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B. Both original and bias-corrected meteorological forcings is used. Results show that the simulated C emissions over the present period are improved by using bias corrected meteorological forcing, with a reduction of the intermodel variability. In the course of the 21st century, burned area and C emissions from fires are shown to increase in Europe, in particular in the Mediterranean basins, in the Balkan regions and in Eastern Europe. However, the projected increase is lower than in other studies that did not fully account for the effect of climate on ecosystem functioning. We demonstrate that the lower sensitivity of burned area and C emissions to climate change is related to the predicted reduction of the net primary productivity, which is identified as the most important determinant of fire activity in the Mediterranean region after anthropogenic interaction. This behavior, consistent with the intermediate fire-productivity hypothesis, limits the sensitivity of future burned area and C emissions from fires on climate change, providing more conservative estimates of future fire patterns, and demonstrates the importance of coupling fire simulation with a climate driven ecosystem productivity model. Citation: Migliavacca, M., et al. (2013), Modeling biomass burning and related carbon emissions during the 21st century in Europe,

No abstract

[1] In this study, we present simulations of a burned area at a European scale for the period 1990-2009 conducted with the Community Land Model (CLM). By using statistics on fire counts and mean fire suppression time from the European Fire Database, we refined the parameterization of the functions describing human ignition/suppression, and we modified the description of biomass availability for fires. The results obtained with the modified model show an improvement of the description of the spatial and interannual variability of the burned area: the model bias is reduced by 45%, and the explained variance is increased by about 9% compared to the original parameterization of the model. The observed relationships between burned area, climate (temperature and precipitation), and aboveground biomass are also reproduced more accurately by the modified model. This is particularly relevant for the applicability of the model to simulate future fire regimes under different climate conditions. However, results showed an overestimation of the burned area for some European countries (e.g., Spain and France) and an underestimation in years with an extreme fire season in Mediterranean countries. Our results highlight the need for refining the parameterization of human ignition/suppression and fuel availability for regional application of fire models implemented in land surface models.

No abstract