The season for large fires in Southern California is projected to lengthen in a changing climate

Dong, Chunyu; Williams, A. Park; Abatzoglou, John T.; Lin, Kairong; Okin, Gregory S.; Gillespie, Thomas W.; Long, Di; Lin, Yen‐Heng; Hall, Alex; MacDonald, Glen M.

doi:10.1038/s43247-022-00344-6

Cited by 41 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This lengthening concerns both the beginning and the end of the period, being even slightly more marked at the beginning. Such a two-ended lengthening is expected in many temperate ecoregions, in contrast to other regions where the fire season typically ends with the arrival of monsoonal precipitation, and little lengthening is observed at the end of the season (Barbero et al 2015;Dong et al 2022). Half of the additional fire activity generated by global warming would occur during the historical high fire season, demonstrating a significant intensification between 16 July and 24 August.…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Extension Of the Wildfire Nichementioning

confidence: 94%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Future expansion, seasonal lengthening and intensification of fire activity under climate change in southeastern France

Pimont

Ruffault

Opitz

et al. 2022

Int. J. Wildland Fire

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background. An increase in fire weather is expected in a warming climate, but its translation to fire activity (fire numbers and sizes) remains largely unknown. Additionally, disentangling the extent to which geographic and seasonal extensions as well as intensification contribute to future fire activity remain largely unknown. Aims. We aimed to assess the impact of future climate change on fire activity in southeastern France and estimate changes in spatial and seasonal distributions. Methods. We projected future fire activities using a Bayesian modelling framework combined with ensemble climate simulations. Changes in numbers of escaped fires (>1 ha), large fires (>100 ha) and burned area were studied for different emission scenarios or degrees of global warming. Key results. Fire activity could increase by up to +180% for +4°C of global warming, with large expansions of fire-prone regions and long seasonal lengthenings. Overall, changes will be dominated by intensification within the historical fire niche, representing two-thirds of additional future fire activity, half of this occurring during the high fire season. Conclusions. This study confirms that major changes in fire niches would be expected in Euro-Mediterranean regions. Implications. Long-term strategic policies for adapting prevention and suppression resources and ecosystems are needed to account for such changes.

show abstract

Section: Spatiotemporal Extension Of the Wildfire Nichementioning

confidence: 94%

“…Moreover, an intensification (i.e. increased fire activity) is expected within the historical niche (Dong et al 2022;Senande-Rivera et al 2022). Thus, future changes in fire activity could reflect both an intensification inside the historically fire-prone region and outside these areas by expansion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future expansion, seasonal lengthening and intensification of fire activity under climate change in southeastern France

Pimont

Ruffault

Opitz

et al. 2022

Int. J. Wildland Fire

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The lengthening was roughly equally distributed between spring and fall, differing by only a few days. Such a symmetric lengthening is expected in other temperate ecoregions, contrary to other regions where the fire season typically ends with the arrival of monsoonal precipitation(Barbero et al 2015;Dong et al 2022). The worse increases (RCP8.5 in 2090) were observed for N100ha and BA, showing +56 days by the end of the century.…”

mentioning

confidence: 66%

“…Ribeiro (Ed. ) Chapter 4 -Risk Assessment https://doi.org/10.14195/978-989-26-2298-9_181 Advances in Forest Fire Research 2022 -Page 1199 fire-prone regions, which should become more severe (Dong et al 2022;Senande-Rivera et al 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lengthening, expansion and intensification of future fire activities in South-Eastern France

Pimont¹,

Ruffault²,

Opitz³

et al. 2022

Advances in Forest Fire Research 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Anticipating future fire activity at global and regional scales is critical in a changing climate. Indeed, fire seasons are expected to lengthen and fire prone areas are expected to extend, but the magnitude, location and timing of such increases remain uncertain. Moreover, an intensification is expected during the core of the fire season of already fire-prone regions. However, quantifying seasonal and spatial impacts of climate change on fire activity is challenging. Here, we projected future fire activities in Southern France using the Firelihood model. This Bayesian probabilistic model operates on a daily basis in 8-km pixels, allowing to analyze both seasonal and spatial distributions of fire activities in a framework integrating stochasticity. Projections were computed for 13 GCM-RCM couples under two RCP scenarios (4.5 and 8.5), assuming that the only factor of change in future fire activity was the daily fire weather. The fire season was defined as the period with fire-activity level higher than the level of the 15th of July of the present period. The fire prone region corresponded to locations with fire-activity levels higher than the 2nd level of a 5-level fire-activity scale derived from numbers of fires larger than 1ha, 100ha (N1ha and N100ha) and burnt areas (BA). Simulations under RCP8.5 show that large increases in fire activity should be expected from the mid-century and that the rate of increase should then accelerate, leading to up to three-fold increases for number of fires larger than 100ha by the end of the century. In particular, all metrics except N1ha increased faster than the mean FWI and even the mean DSR. Such increases were partly caused by a massive seasonal lengthening from 45-50 days to up to 125 days, equally distributed between spring and autumn. However, the intensification during the present fire season was found to contribute slightly more to the overall increase than the lengthening itself. For example, for N100ha, the intensification would represent a 280 % increase in fire activity with respect to the present seasonal reference, whereas the lengthening outside of the present season would represent +230%. The fire prone area would increase by 168%, shifting from 22 to 56% of region total area. However, the intensification inside the already fire-prone region was found to contribute more to the increase than the spatial extension. For example, for N100ha, the intensification would represent a 190% increase with respect to the present fire-prone regional reference, whereas the extension outside of this area would represent +110%. These drastic increases provide a good indication of the potential lengthening of the fire season, spatial extension and intensification of future fire activities under RCP 8.5, all three being importantly concerned, but dominated by intensification. Extending and lengthening suppression policies may allow to mitigate projected increases, but the intensification of fire activity during the core of the fire season overwhelm current fire suppression capacities.

show abstract

“…Due to the burning of large forest areas globally every year, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by forest fires increases significantly. The contribution of these emissions to global warming has been found to be a significant factor (Grace, 2004;Van der Werf et al, 2010;Dong et al, 2022). Conversely, climate change due to global warming are largely responsible for the increased incidence of forest fires.…”

Section: Impact Of Fire Emission On Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“Forest fire emissions: A contribution to global climate change”

Singh

2022

Front. For. Glob. Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Forest fires are emitting substantial amounts of greenhouse gases and particulate matter into the atmosphere than assumed in state climate targets. It can play an important role in combustible environments, such as shrublands, grasslands, and forests, and contribute to climate change. Thus, forest fire, and climate change is intertwined concepts. As vegetation burns, release the carbon stored within them. This is the main reason why large-scale forest fires release atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and hence, are responsible for increasing the rate of climate change to a great extent. It is extremely significant to measure the contribution of global forest fire and emissions trends of greenhouse gases. In this context, continental-scale carbon emissions assessments were primarily attempted using ground-based datasets for forest ecosystem fires. Considerable research has been published employing remote sensing data from coast to coast. While ground-based data are valuable, they have some restrictions that can be overcome by remote sensing. Ground-based fire data are primarily limited to the total burned area, with their completeness changing yearly with the location. Remote sensing can provide additional spatio-temporal fire information to improve fire emission estimates. In this paper, the factors driving forest fire, with a brief discussion on the triangular relationship between fire, land degradation, and climate change, the role of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), machine learning (ML), and a critical overview of state-of-the-art global climate change are presented.

show abstract

The season for large fires in Southern California is projected to lengthen in a changing climate

Cited by 41 publications

References 56 publications

Future expansion, seasonal lengthening and intensification of fire activity under climate change in southeastern France

Future expansion, seasonal lengthening and intensification of fire activity under climate change in southeastern France

Lengthening, expansion and intensification of future fire activities in South-Eastern France

“Forest fire emissions: A contribution to global climate change”

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About