Characteristics of Lightning and Wildland Fire Ignition in the Pacific Northwest

Rorig, Miriam; Ferguson, Sue A.

doi:10.1175/1520-0450(1999)038<1565:colawf>2.0.co;2

Cited by 164 publications

(131 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…While in areas with high lightning densities, high accumulations of precipitation can also be found (which prohibit lightning fires), in the drier edge regions, the possibility for lightning ignition increases. This supports the hypothesis that fuel moisture and drought are more important for ignition through lightning than the total number of lightning flashes (Larjavaara et al 2005;Rorig and Ferguson 1999). A comparison between weather radar data and lightning location data could help on understanding the relationship between the amount of precipitation and the distribution of flashes in the future.…”

Section: Characteristics Of Lightning Firessupporting

confidence: 75%

Analysis of lightning-induced forest fires in Austria

Müller

Vacik

Diendorfer

et al. 2012

Theor Appl Climatol

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Besides human-caused fires, lightning is the major reason for forest fire ignition in Austria. In order to analyse the causes of ignition and to characterise lightning-induced forest fires, fire records were compared with the real appearance of lightning events by using the Austrian Lightning Detection and Information System for the period from 1993 to 2010. A probability was estimated for each forest fire being caused by lightning by using a decision tree and decision matrices based on flash characteristics (e.g. amplitude, time, location). It could be shown that 15 % of documented forest fires were lightning-caused. Nearly all lightning-caused fires were found during the summer months, whereas almost 40 % of all fires occurring from June to August were naturally caused. Most lightning-caused fires took place in the south and east of Austria. Lightning fires were more frequent at higher altitudes and primarily affected conifer forests. The median burned area was lower than that for anthropogenic forest fires.

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Section: Characteristics Of Lightning Firessupporting

confidence: 75%

Analysis of lightning-induced forest fires in Austria

Müller

Vacik

Diendorfer

et al. 2012

Theor Appl Climatol

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“…8). Furthermore, the isolated nature of many dry thunderstorm events highlights the potential for a strong capping inversion that must be overcome with only a few updrafts growing strong enough to become a thunderstorm (Flannigan and Wotton, 1991; and Ferguson, 1999;Hall, 2007). This explains why the highest potential for dry thunderstorm activity is associated with the most extreme values of low-level instability.…”

Section: Meteorological Factors Associated With Lightning Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of lightning and other meteorological factors on fire activity in the North American boreal forest: implications for fire weather forecasting

et al. 2010

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Abstract. The effects of lightning and other meteorological factors on wildfire activity in the North American boreal forest are statistically analyzed during the fire seasons of 2000-2006 through an integration of the following data sets: the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) level 2 fire products, the 3-hourly 32-km gridded meteorological data from North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), and the lightning data collected by the Canadian Lightning Detection Network (CLDN) and the Alaska Lightning Detection Network (ALDN). Positive anomalies of the 500 hPa geopotential height field, convective available potential energy (CAPE), number of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, and the number of consecutive dry days are found to be statistically important to the seasonal variation of MODIS fire counts in a large portion of Canada and the entirety of Alaska. Analysis of fire occurrence patterns in the eastern and western boreal forest regions shows that dry (in the absence of precipitation) lightning strikes account for only 20% of the total lightning strikes, but are associated with (and likely cause) 40% of the MODIS observed fire counts in these regions. The chance for ignition increases when a threshold of at least 10 dry strikes per NARR grid box and at least 10 consecutive dry days is reached. Due to the orientation of the large-scale pattern, complex differences in fire and lightning occurrence and variability were also found between the eastern and western sub-regions. Locations with a high percentage of dry strikes commonly experience an increased number of fire counts, but the mean number of fire counts per dry strike is more than 50% higher in western boreal forest sub-region, suggesting a geographic and possibleCorrespondence to: J. Wang (jwang7@unl.edu) topographic influence. While wet lightning events are found to occur with a large range of CAPE values, a high probability for dry lightning occurs only when 500 hPa geopotential heights are above ∼5700 m and CAPE values are near the maximum observed level, underscoring the importance of low-level instability to boreal fire weather forecasts.

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“…Alternatively, the use of fire frequency (instead of fire ignition probability) was suggested by Malamud et al (2005), accounting for the fact that there are many more minor, undetected ignitions than "relevant" fires. Most natural fires are caused by lightning strikes, and hence the frequency and type of electric storms in a region are important drivers in such models (Rorig and Ferguson, 1999). Human-caused ignitions depend on the presence of people and their respective activities.…”

Section: Occurrencementioning

confidence: 99%