scholarly journals No Relief from Rain: Climate Change Fuels Compound Disasters

Eos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Rain Events ◽  
In Fire

Climate change is increasing the risk of fire-rain events, raising mudslide concerns in fire-prone communities.

scholarly journals Addressing the Water–Energy–Food Nexus through Enhanced Green Roof Performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1972
Author(s):  
Jeremy Wright ◽  
Jeremy Lytle ◽  
Devon Santillo ◽  
Luzalen Marcos ◽  
Kristiina Valter Mai
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Performance Optimization ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Stormwater Management ◽  
Green Roof ◽  
Green Roofs ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Rainwater Runoff ◽  
Rain Events

Urban densification and climate change are creating a multitude of issues for cities around the globe. Contributing factors include increased impervious surfaces that result in poor stormwater management, rising urban temperatures, poor air quality, and a lack of available green space. In the context of volatile weather, there are growing concerns regarding the effects of increased intense rainfalls and how they affect highly populated areas. Green roofs are becoming a stormwater management tool, occupying a growing area of urban roof space in many developed cities. In addition to the water-centric approach to the implementation of green roofs, these systems offer a multitude of benefits across the urban water–energy–food nexus. This paper provides insight to green roof systems available that can be utilized as tools to mitigate the effects of climate change in urbanized areas. A new array of green roof testing modules is presented along with research methods employed to address current issues related to food, energy and water performance optimization. Rainwater runoff after three rain events was observed to be reduced commensurate with the presence of a blue roof retention membrane in the testbed, the growing media depth and type, as well as the productive nature of the plants in the testbed. Preliminary observations indicate that more productive green roof systems may have increasingly positive benefits across the water–energy–food nexus in dense urban areas that are vulnerable to climate disruption.

scholarly journals Extreme Wildfire occurrence in response to Global Change type Droughts in the Northern Mediterranean

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Ruffault ◽  
Thomas Curt ◽  
Nicolas K. Martin St-Paul ◽  
Vincent Moron ◽  
Ricardo M. Trigo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Specific Interactions ◽  
Wildfire Occurrence ◽  
Drought Conditions ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Mediterranean France

Abstract. Increasing drought conditions under global warming are expected to alter the frequency and distribution of large, high intensity wildfires. Yet, little is known regarding how it will affect fire weather and translate into wildfire behaviour. Here, we analysed the climatology of extreme wildfires that occurred during the exceptionally dry summers of 2003 and 2016 in Mediterranean France. We identified two distinct shifts in fire climatology towards fire weather spaces that had not been explored before, and which result from specific interactions between the types of drought and the types of fire. In 2016, a long-lasting press drought intensified wind-driven fires. In 2003, a hot drought combining a heatwave with a press drought intensified heat-driven fires. Our findings highlight that increasing drought conditions projected by climate change scenarios might affect the dryness of fuel compartments and create several new generations of wildfire overwhelming fire suppression capacities.

What the past can say about the present and future of fire

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 66-87
Author(s):  
Jennifer R. Marlon
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Combustion Products ◽  
Temperature Changes ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Warming Climate ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Very High

AbstractWildfires are an integral part of most terrestrial ecosystems. Paleofire records composed of charcoal, soot, and other combustion products deposited in lake and marine sediments, soils, and ice provide a record of the varying importance of fire over time on every continent. This study reviews paleofire research to identify lessons about the nature of fire on Earth and how its past variability is relevant to modern environmental challenges. Four lessons are identified. First, fire is highly sensitive to climate change, and specifically to temperature changes. As long as there is abundant, dry fuel, we can expect that in a warming climate, fires will continue to grow unusually large, severe, and uncontrollable in fire-prone environments. Second, a better understanding of “slow” (interannual to multidecadal) socioecological processes is essential for predicting future wildfire and carbon emissions. Third, current patterns of burning, which are very low in some areas and very high in others—are often unprecedented in the context of the Holocene. Taken together, these insights point to a fourth lesson—that current changes in wildfire dynamics provide an opportunity for paleoecologists to engage the public and help them understand the potential consequences of anthropogenic climate change.

Evaluation of critical atmospheric patterns for the occurrence of forest fires in a climate change context in the northwest of Argentine Patagonia.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verónica Dankiewicz ◽  
Matilde M. Rusticucci ◽  
Soledad M. Collazo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Forest Fires ◽  
Fire Hazard ◽  
Fire Danger ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Fire Weather Index ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Argentine Patagonia ◽  
In Fire

<p>Forest fires are a global phenomenon and result from complex interactions between weather and climate conditions, ignition sources, and humans. Understanding these relationships will contribute to the development of management strategies for their mitigation and adaptation. In the context of climate change, fire hazard conditions are expected to increase in many regions of the world due to projected changes in climate, which include an increase in temperatures and the occurrence of more intense droughts. In Argentina, northwestern Patagonia is an area very sensitive to these changes because of its climate, vegetation, the urbanizations highly exposed to fires, and the proximity of two of the largest and oldest National Parks in the country. The main objective of this work is to analyze the possible influence of climate change on some atmospheric patterns related to fire danger in northwestern Argentine Patagonia. The data were obtained from two CMIP5 global climate models CSIRO-Mk3-6-0 and GFDL-ESM2G and the CMIP5 multimodel ensemble, in the historical experiment and two representative concentration pathways: RCP2.6 and RCP8.5. The data used in this study cover the region's fire season (FS), from September to April, and were divided into five periods of 20 years each, a historical period (1986-2005), which was compared with four future periods: near (2021-2040), medium (2041-2060), far (2061-2080) and very far (2081-2100). The statistical distribution of the monthly composite fields of the FS was studied for some of the main fire drivers: sea surface temperature in the region of the index EN3.4 (SST EN3.4), sea level pressure anomalies ​​(SLP), surface air temperature anomalies (TAS), the Antarctic Oscillation Index (AOI) and monthly accumulated precipitation (PR). In addition, the partial correlation coefficient was calculated to determine the independent contribution of each atmospheric variable to the Fire Weather Index (FWI), used as a proxy for the mean FS danger. As a result, we observed that SST EN3.4 is the only one that could indicate a reduction in fire danger in the future, although no variable presented a significant contribution to the FWI with respect to the others. In the RCP8.5 scenario, greater fire danger is projected by the TAS, the PR, the SLP, and relative by the AOI, while in the RCP2.6 scenario, only the TAS shows influence leading to an increase, which would be offset by the opposite influence of SST EN3.4 for the same periods in this scenario. In conclusion, in RCP8.5 it could be assumed that there is a trend towards an increase in fire danger given the influence in this sense of most of the variables analyzed, but not in RCP2.6 where there would be no significant changes.</p>

scholarly journals Using CESM-RESFire to understand climate–fire–ecosystem interactions and the implications for decadal climate variability

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 995-1020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yufei Zou ◽  
Yuhang Wang ◽  
Yun Qian ◽  
Hanqin Tian ◽  
Jia Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Radiative Effect ◽  
Aerosol Cloud ◽  
Fire Activity ◽  
Climate Systems ◽  
Aerosol Cloud Interactions ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Ecosystem Interactions ◽  
Feedback Pathways

Abstract. Large wildfires exert strong disturbance on regional and global climate systems and ecosystems by perturbing radiative forcing as well as the carbon and water balance between the atmosphere and land surface, while short- and long-term variations in fire weather, terrestrial ecosystems, and human activity modulate fire intensity and reshape fire regimes. The complex climate–fire–ecosystem interactions were not fully integrated in previous climate model studies, and the resulting effects on the projections of future climate change are not well understood. Here we use the fully interactive REgion-Specific ecosystem feedback Fire model (RESFire) that was developed in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to investigate these interactions and their impacts on climate systems and fire activity. We designed two sets of decadal simulations using CESM-RESFire for present-day (2001–2010) and future (2051–2060) scenarios, respectively, and conducted a series of sensitivity experiments to assess the effects of individual feedback pathways among climate, fire, and ecosystems. Our implementation of RESFire, which includes online land–atmosphere coupling of fire emissions and fire-induced land cover change (LCC), reproduces the observed aerosol optical depth (AOD) from space-based Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite products and ground-based AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) data; it agrees well with carbon budget benchmarks from previous studies. We estimate the global averaged net radiative effect of both fire aerosols and fire-induced LCC at -0.59±0.52 W m−2, which is dominated by fire aerosol–cloud interactions (-0.82±0.19 W m−2), in the present-day scenario under climatological conditions of the 2000s. The fire-related net cooling effect increases by ∼170 % to -1.60±0.27 W m−2 in the 2050s under the conditions of the Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5) scenario. Such considerably enhanced radiative effect is attributed to the largely increased global burned area (+19 %) and fire carbon emissions (+100 %) from the 2000s to the 2050s driven by climate change. The net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon between the land and atmosphere components in the simulations increases by 33 % accordingly, implying that biomass burning is an increasing carbon source at short-term timescales in the future. High-latitude regions with prevalent peatlands would be more vulnerable to increased fire threats due to climate change, and the increase in fire aerosols could counter the projected decrease in anthropogenic aerosols due to air pollution control policies in many regions. We also evaluate two distinct feedback mechanisms that are associated with fire aerosols and fire-induced LCC, respectively. On a global scale, the first mechanism imposes positive feedbacks to fire activity through enhanced droughts with suppressed precipitation by fire aerosol–cloud interactions, while the second one manifests as negative feedbacks due to reduced fuel loads by fire consumption and post-fire tree mortality and recovery processes. These two feedback pathways with opposite effects compete at regional to global scales and increase the complexity of climate–fire–ecosystem interactions and their climatic impacts.

Climate change and vulnerability of bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) in a fire-prone landscape

2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Falke ◽  
Rebecca L. Flitcroft ◽  
Jason B. Dunham ◽  
Kristina M. McNyset ◽  
Paul F. Hessburg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Physical Habitat ◽  
Bull Trout ◽  
Salvelinus Confluentus ◽  
Management Actions ◽  
Trout Population ◽  
Fire Scenarios ◽  
Population Vulnerability ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Future Management

Linked atmospheric and wildfire changes will complicate future management of native coldwater fishes in fire-prone landscapes, and new approaches to management that incorporate uncertainty are needed to address this challenge. We used a Bayesian network (BN) approach to evaluate population vulnerability of bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) in the Wenatchee River basin, Washington, USA, under current and future climate and fire scenarios. The BN was based on modeled estimates of wildfire, water temperature, and physical habitat prior to, and following, simulated fires throughout the basin. We found that bull trout population vulnerability depended on the extent to which climate effects can be at least partially offset by managing factors such as habitat connectivity and fire size. Moreover, our analysis showed that local management can significantly reduce the vulnerability of bull trout to climate change given appropriate management actions. Tools such as our BN that explicitly integrate the linked nature of climate and wildfire, and incorporate uncertainty in both input data and vulnerability estimates, will be vital in effective future management to conserve native coldwater fishes.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF FOREST ECOSYSTEMS IN THE PROCESS OF MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION TO THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Ratko Ristić ◽  
Ivan Malušević ◽  
Boris Radić ◽  
Slobodan Milanović ◽  
Vukašin Milčanović ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Forest Ecosystems ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Annual Precipitation ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
Mountainous Regions ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Rain Events

Forest ecosystems provide a wide range of environmental services with an important role in the Earth’s life-support system. Climate change in Southeastern Europe (SEE) and forecasts for the period until 2070 have a huge impact on the present and future planning in forestry and watershed management, due to the observed trends: the increment of mean annual air temperature from 2,5–5,0 °C until the end of the XXI century; redistribution of annual precipitation, with much more precipitation in the spring-summer period, during short, intensive rain events; a decrease of annual precipitation and soil moisture of 10–20 %, with extreme consequences: dieback and disappearance of forests in huge areas of hilly-mountainous regions. Degradation and loss of forests leads to spread and intensification of soil erosion, with frequent torrential floods, mudflows, landslides, and avalanches. Stable forest ecosystems are pillars of sustainable development, repopulation and could provide means and resources to battle and overcome poverty in moun-tainous regions of southeast Europe.

scholarly journals The impacts of climate, land use, and demography on fires during the 21st century simulated by CLM-CN

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 9709-9746 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Kloster ◽  
N. M. Mahowald ◽  
J. T. Randerson ◽  
P. J. Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Use ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Climate Projection ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
The Future ◽  
In Fire

Abstract. Landscape fires during the 21st century are expected to change in response to multiple agents of global change. Important controlling factors include climate controls on the length and intensity of the fire season, fuel availability, and fire management, which are already anthropogenically perturbed today and are predicted to change further in the future. An improved understanding of future fires will contribute to an improved ability to project future anthropogenic climate change, as changes in fire behavior will in turn impact climate. In the present study we used a coupled-carbon-fire model to investigate how changes in climate, demography, and land use may alter fire emissions. We used climate projections following the SRES A1B scenario from two different climate models (ECHAM5/MPI-OM and CCSM) and changes in population. Land use and harvest rates were prescribed according to the RCP 45 scenario. In response to the combined effect of all these drivers, our model estimated, depending on our choice of climate projection, an increase in future (2075–2099) fire carbon emissions by 17 and 62% compared to present day (1985–2009). The largest increase in fire emissions was predicted for Southern Hemisphere South America for both climate projection. For Northern Hemisphere Africa, a region that contributed significantly to the global total fire carbon emissions, the response varied between a decrease and an increase depending on the climate projection. We disentangled the contribution of the single forcing factors to the overall response by conducting an additional set of simulations in which each factor was individually held constant at pre-industrial levels. The two different projections of future climate change evaluated in this study led to increases in global fire carbon emissions by 22% (CCSM) and 66% (ECHAM5/MPI-OM). The RCP 45 projection of harvest and land use led to a decrease in fire carbon emissions by −5%. Changes in human ignition led to an increase in 20%. When we also included changes in fire management efforts to suppress fires in densely populated areas, global fire carbon emission decreased by −6% in response to changes in population density. We concluded from this study that changes in fire emissions in the future are controlled by multiple interacting factors. Although changes in climate led to an increase in future fire emissions this could be globally counterbalanced by coupled changes in land use, harvest, and demography.

scholarly journals Making a World of Difference in Fire and Climate Change

Fire Ecology ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 90-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary R. Huffman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
In Fire

Species adaptation to both fire and climate change in tropical montane heath: Can Melaleuca uxorum (Myrtaceae) survive?

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J Ford ◽  
Britta Denise Hardesty
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Soil Seed Bank ◽  
Seed Storage ◽  
Fire Disturbance ◽  
Cloud Base ◽  
Widespread Species ◽  
History Of ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Local Burning ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Resprouting following fire is an effective and well utilized strategy for tropical montane heath species which have had a long evolutionary history of intermittent fire disturbance. Research conducted in both burnt and unburnt heath suggests that species richness is related to fire, however actual species presence is dependent upon local burning regimes. Taxa that persist in fire-adapted environments may survive through mechanisms including seed storage in the soil seed bank, resprouting from basal, axillary or epicormic buds, roots/rhizomes or terminal aerial buds and/or through migration of seed. We investigated the montane endemic Melaleuca uxorum’s response to fire to understand local adaptation and persistence to fire in fire prone heath and to understand potential impacts of climate change on montane heath ecosystems. We found that the species resprouts at the stem base, along stems from epicormic buds and from axillary buds. The species forms small colonies which appear to be a mixture of sexual and asexual (clonal) reproduction. We predict that the effects of climate change will conspire against tropical montane heath below 1000 m, and those communities away from maritime influences will be under threat of increasingly reduced population numbers and extent as the dry season cloud base is expected to rise in elevation with anticipated rising temperatures. Furthermore, as evaporation rates increase, such communities are anticipated to lose their local specialized flora and to be replaced by more common unspecialized, widespread species.

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