Changing weather extremes call for early warning of potential for catastrophic fire

Matthias M. Boer, Rachael H. Nolan, Victor Resco De Dios, Hamish Clarke, Owen F. Price, Ross A. Bradstock

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

72 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Changing frequencies of extreme weather events and shifting fire seasons call for enhanced capability to forecast where and when forested landscapes switch from a nonflammable (i.e., wet fuel) state to the highly flammable (i.e., dry fuel) state required for catastrophic forest fires. Current forest fire danger indices used in Europe, North America, and Australia rate potential fire behavior by combining numerical indices of fuel moisture content, potential rate of fire spread, and fire intensity. These numerical rating systems lack the physical basis required to reliably quantify forest flammability outside the environments of their development or under novel climate conditions. Here, we argue that exceedance of critical forest flammability thresholds is a prerequisite for major forest fires and therefore early warning systems should be based on a reliable prediction of fuel moisture content plus a regionally calibrated model of how forest fire activity responds to variation in fuel moisture content. We demonstrate the potential of this approach through a case study in Portugal. We use a physically based fuel moisture model with historical weather and fire records to identify critical fuel moisture thresholds for forest fire activity and then show that the catastrophic June 2017 forest fires in central Portugal erupted shortly after fuels in the region dried out to historically unprecedented levels.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1196-1202
Number of pages7
JournalEarth's Future
Volume5
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2017 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and dis- tribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Keywords

  • fire alarms
  • fire weather
  • forest fires

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