Synoptic Weather Types Associated With Critical Fire Weather

Schroeder, Mark J.; Glovinsky, Monte; Henricks, Virgil F.; Hood, Frank C.; Hull, Melvin K.

doi:10.21236/ad0449630

Cited by 74 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Two recent studies have also focused on flow acceleration in idealized gaps, and found that strong gap flow developed primarily because of downward mass and momentum fluxes, with strongest flows when geostrophic winds were parallel to the gap Durran 2004, 2006). These results provide a mechanism relating the synoptic scale pressure gradient to the strength of Santa Anas, and are somewhat consistent with the picture painted by previous research: Case studies have suggested that Santa Anas form because of an upper level northwest to southeast pressure gradient (Sommers 1978;Schroeder et al 1964), with a high sea-level pressure anomaly in the Great Basin (Conil and Hall 2006;Raphael 2003).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Local and synoptic mechanisms causing Southern California’s Santa Ana winds

2009

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Local and synoptic mechanisms causing Southern California’s Santa Ana winds

2009

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“…Fire frequency in the boreal forest is primarily controlled by large-scale climate processes, specifically persistent midtropospheric anomalies that at the surface are expressed as blocking high pressures (Schroeder and others 1964;Newark 1975;Street and Birch 1986;Flannigan and Harrington 1988;Johnson and Wowchuk 1993). In this century, however, agricultural settlement in the southern fringe of the boreal forest and logging further north have resulted in a new multiple-disturbance regime that has caused significant changes in forest composition.…”

Section: Boreal Forest Wildfires Forest Fragmentation and Loggingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compounded Perturbations Yield Ecological Surprises

1998

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All species have evolved in the presence of disturbance, and thus are in a sense matched to the recurrence pattern of the perturbations. Consequently, disturbances within the typical range, even at the extreme of that range as defined by large, infrequent disturbances (LIDs), usually result in little long-term change to the system's fundamental character. We argue that more serious ecological consequences result from compounded perturbations within the normative recovery time of the community in question. We consider both physically based disturbance (for example, storm, volcanic eruption, and forest fire) and biologically based disturbance of populations, such as overharvesting, invasion, and disease, and their interactions. Dispersal capability and measures of generation time or age to first reproduction of the species of interest seem to be the important metrics for scaling the size and frequency of disturbances among different types of ecosystems. We develop six scenarios that describe communities that have been subjected to multiple perturbations, either simultaneously or at a rate faster than the rate of recovery, and appear to have entered new domains or ''ecological surprises.'' In some cases, three or more disturbances seem to have been required to initiate the changed state. We argue that in a world of ever-more-pervasive anthropogenic impacts on natural communities coupled with the increasing certainty of global change, compounded perturbations and ecological surprises will become more common. Understanding these ecological synergisms will be basic to environmental management decisions of the 21st century.

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“…Comparing the fire catalogs to historical weather conditions (25,40) reveals that larger events are strongly correlated with extreme weather conditions, called Santa Ana winds, which are unusually hot periods when humidity often falls below 5% and wind speeds reach up to 80 km͞h, with occasional gusts up to twice that speed (55). The similar shrubland fire regimes of these two regions allows us to parameterize our simulations for the smaller SMM region but compare our numerics with the higher quality LPNF data set, where the fire size distribution has greater statistical significance.…”

Section: Hfire Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wildfires, complexity, and highly optimized tolerance

Moritz

Morais

Summerell

et al. 2005

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

213

169

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Recent, large fires in the western United States have rekindled debates about fire management and the role of natural fire regimes in the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems. This real-world experience parallels debates involving abstract models of forest fires, a central metaphor in complex systems theory. Both real and modeled fire-prone landscapes exhibit roughly power law statistics in fire size versus frequency. Here, we examine historical fire catalogs and a detailed fire simulation model; both are in agreement with a highly optimized tolerance model. Highly optimized tolerance suggests robustness tradeoffs underlie resilience in different fire-prone ecosystems. Understanding these mechanisms may provide new insights into the structure of ecological systems and be key in evaluating fire management strategies and sensitivities to climate change.resilience

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Synoptic Weather Types Associated With Critical Fire Weather

Cited by 74 publications

References 2 publications

Local and synoptic mechanisms causing Southern California’s Santa Ana winds

Local and synoptic mechanisms causing Southern California’s Santa Ana winds

Compounded Perturbations Yield Ecological Surprises

Wildfires, complexity, and highly optimized tolerance

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