Projections of the Fire Weather Index (FWI) using CORDEX-CORE simulations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Raffaele ◽  
Rita Nogherotto
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Time Slice ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Climate Scenarios ◽  
Future Time ◽  
Weather Index ◽  
Fire Weather Index ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin

<p>Changes in global fire activity are influenced by a multitude of factors including land-cover change, policies, and climatic conditions. In this study we focus our attention on climate, investigating how relative humidity, wind, temperature and precipitation changes can act together in fire danger. Within the CORDEX-CORE initiative, two regional climate models (RCM) have been used at  0.22° resolution and to downscale 3 global climate models (GCMs) from the CMIP5 project. The analysis is carried out over 9 CORDEX domains for two climate scenarios namely the RCP2.6 and the RCP8.5. The high resolution regional climate simulations have been used to evaluate changes in the fire danger by means of the Fire Weather Index (FWI).  The attention is focused on the Mediterranean Basin and in South America, as well as in Australia and in the North America domains. Both climate scenarios show similar projections for the near future time slice (2031-2050) with an increase of the index in those areas that are already affected by seasonal fires such as Spain and Southern Italy for the Mediterranean Basin and the central band of Brazil. For the future time slice (2081-2100) the signal increases, and it is stronger for the RCP8.5 scenario in all regions as expected.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Attribution of the Australian bushfire risk to anthropogenic climate change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh ◽  
Folmer Krikken ◽  
Sophie Lewis ◽  
Nicholas J. Leach ◽  
Flavio Lehner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Southern Annular Mode ◽  
Warming Trend ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Weather Index ◽  
Fire Weather Index

Abstract. Disastrous bushfires during the last months of 2019 and January 2020 affected Australia, raising the question to what extent the risk of these fires was exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. To answer the question for southeastern Australia, where fires were particularly severe, affecting people and ecosystems, we use a physically-based index of fire weather, the Fire Weather Index, long-term observations of heat and drought, and eleven large ensembles of state-of-the-art climate models. In agreement with previous analyses we find that heat extremes have become more likely by at least a factor two due to the long-term warming trend. However, current climate models overestimate variability and tend to underestimate the long-term trend in these extremes, so the true change in the likelihood of extreme heat could be larger. We do not find an attributable trend in either extreme annual drought or the driest month of the fire season September–February. The observations, however, show a weak drying trend in the annual mean. Finally, we find large trends in the Fire Weather Index in the ERA5 reanalysis, and a smaller but significant increase by at least 30 % in the models. The trend is mainly driven by the increase of temperature extremes and hence also likely underestimated. For the 2019/20 season more than half of the July–December drought was driven by record excursions of the Indian Ocean dipole and Southern Annular Mode. These factors are included in the analysis. The study reveals the complexity of the 2019/20 bushfire event, with some, but not all drivers showing an imprint of anthropogenic climate change.

scholarly journals Increased likelihood of heat-induced large wildfires in the Mediterranean Basin

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Ruffault ◽  
T Curt ◽  
V Moron ◽  
RM Trigo ◽  
F Mouillot ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Atmospheric Conditions ◽  
Climate Scenarios ◽  
Weather Types ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin

AbstractWildfire activity is expected to increase across the Mediterranean Basin because of climate change. However, the effects of future climate changes on the combinations of atmospheric conditions that promote large wildfires remain largely unknown. Using a fire-weather based classification of wildfires, we show that future climate scenarios point to an increase in the frequency and severity of two heat-induced fire-weather types that have been responsible for a majority of record-breaking wildfire events. Heat-induced fire-weather types are characterized by compound dry warm conditions and occur in the summer during heatwaves, either under moderate (sudden heatwave type) or intense (hot drought type) drought. Heat-induced fire weather is projected to increase in frequency by 14% by the end of the century (2071-2100) under the RCP4.5 scenario, and by 30% under the RCP8.5. These findings suggest that the frequency and extent of large wildfires will increase throughout the Mediterranean Basin, with far-reaching impacts.

scholarly journals Attribution of the Australian bushfire risk to anthropogenic climate change

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 941-960
Author(s):  
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh ◽  
Folmer Krikken ◽  
Sophie Lewis ◽  
Nicholas J. Leach ◽  
Flavio Lehner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Southern Annular Mode ◽  
Warming Trend ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Weather Index ◽  
Fire Weather Index

Abstract. Disastrous bushfires during the last months of 2019 and January 2020 affected Australia, raising the question to what extent the risk of these fires was exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. To answer the question for southeastern Australia, where fires were particularly severe, affecting people and ecosystems, we use a physically based index of fire weather, the Fire Weather Index; long-term observations of heat and drought; and 11 large ensembles of state-of-the-art climate models. We find large trends in the Fire Weather Index in the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Atmospheric Reanalysis (ERA5) since 1979 and a smaller but significant increase by at least 30 % in the models. Therefore, we find that climate change has induced a higher weather-induced risk of such an extreme fire season. This trend is mainly driven by the increase of temperature extremes. In agreement with previous analyses we find that heat extremes have become more likely by at least a factor of 2 due to the long-term warming trend. However, current climate models overestimate variability and tend to underestimate the long-term trend in these extremes, so the true change in the likelihood of extreme heat could be larger, suggesting that the attribution of the increased fire weather risk is a conservative estimate. We do not find an attributable trend in either extreme annual drought or the driest month of the fire season, September–February. The observations, however, show a weak drying trend in the annual mean. For the 2019/20 season more than half of the July–December drought was driven by record excursions of the Indian Ocean Dipole and Southern Annular Mode, factors which are included in the analysis here. The study reveals the complexity of the 2019/20 bushfire event, with some but not all drivers showing an imprint of anthropogenic climate change. Finally, the study concludes with a qualitative review of various vulnerability and exposure factors that each play a role, along with the hazard in increasing or decreasing the overall impact of the bushfires.

Regional Climate Scenarios for use in Nordic Water Resources Studies

2003 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 399-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Rummukainen ◽  
J. Räisänen ◽  
D. Bjørge ◽  
J.H. Christensen ◽  
O.B. Christensen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Climate Scenarios ◽  
Soil Frost ◽  
Nordic Region ◽  
Regional Climate Projections

According to global climate projections, a substantial global climate change will occur during the next decades, under the assumption of continuous anthropogenic climate forcing. Global models, although fundamental in simulating the response of the climate system to anthropogenic forcing are typically geographically too coarse to well represent many regional or local features. In the Nordic region, climate studies are conducted in each of the Nordic countries to prepare regional climate projections with more detail than in global ones. Results so far indicate larger temperature changes in the Nordic region than in the global mean, regional increases and decreases in net precipitation, longer growing season, shorter snow season etc. These in turn affect runoff, snowpack, groundwater, soil frost and moisture, and thus hydropower production potential, flooding risks etc. Regional climate models do not yet fully incorporate hydrology. Water resources studies are carried out off-line using hydrological models. This requires archived meteorological output from climate models. This paper discusses Nordic regional climate scenarios for use in regional water resources studies. Potential end-users of water resources scenarios are the hydropower industry, dam safety instances and planners of other lasting infrastructure exposed to precipitation, river flows and flooding.

scholarly journals Combining fire radiative power observations with the fire weather index improves the estimation of fire emissions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Di Giuseppe ◽  
Samuel Rémy ◽  
Florian Pappenberger ◽  
Fredrik Wetterhall
Keyword(s):  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Atmospheric Composition ◽  
Composition Analysis ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Atmospheric Conditions ◽  
Weather Index ◽  
Fire Weather Index ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Abstract. The atmospheric composition analysis and forecast for the European Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Services (CAMS) relies on biomass burning fire emission estimates from the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS). GFAS converts fire radiative power (FRP) observations from MODIS satellites into smoke constituents. Missing observations are filled in using persistence where observed FRP from the previous day are progressed in time until a new observation is recorded. One of the consequences of this assumption is an overestimation of fire duration, which in turn translates into an overestimation of emissions from fires. In this study persistence is replaced by modelled predictions using the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI), which describes how atmospheric conditions affect the vegetation moisture content and ultimately fire duration. The skill in predicting emissions from biomass burning is improved with the new technique, which indicates that using an FWI-based model to infer emissions from FRP is better than persistence when observations are not available.

scholarly journals Dust emission size distribution impact on aerosol budget and radiative forcing over the Mediterranean region: a regional climate model approach

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 10545-10567 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Nabat ◽  
F. Solmon ◽  
M. Mallet ◽  
J. F. Kok ◽  
S. Somot
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Dust Emission ◽  
Dust Deposition ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Dust Distribution ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin

Abstract. The present study investigates the dust emission and load over the Mediterranean basin using the coupled chemistry–aerosol–regional climate model RegCM-4. The first step of this work focuses on dust particle emission size distribution modeling. We compare a parameterization in which the emission is based on the individual kinetic energy of the aggregates striking the surface to a recent parameterization based on an analogy with the fragmentation of brittle materials. The main difference between the two dust schemes concerns the mass proportion of fine aerosol that is reduced in the case of the new dust parameterization, with consequences for optical properties. At the episodic scale, comparisons between RegCM-4 simulations, satellite and ground-based data show a clear improvement using the new dust distribution in terms of aerosol optical depth (AOD) values and geographic gradients. These results are confirmed at the seasonal scale for the investigated year 2008. This change of dust distribution has sensitive impacts on the simulated regional dust budget, notably dry dust deposition and the regional direct aerosol radiative forcing over the Mediterranean basin. In particular, we find that the new size distribution produces a higher dust deposition flux, and smaller top of atmosphere (TOA) dust radiative cooling. A multi-annual simulation is finally carried out using the new dust distribution over the period 2000–2009. The average SW radiative forcing over the Mediterranean Sea reaches −13.6 W m−2 at the surface, and −5.5 W m−2 at TOA. The LW radiative forcing is positive over the basin: 1.7 W m−2 on average over the Mediterranean Sea at the surface, and 0.6 W m−2 at TOA.

Fire-Weather Index and Climate Change

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzana Hubnerova ◽  
Sylvia Esterby ◽  
Steve Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Weather Index ◽  
Fire Weather Index

scholarly journals Proposal of an Iot Solution to Fire Risk Assessment Problem

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Bernardo ◽  
Pedro Silva ◽  
Paulo Fazendeiro
Keyword(s):  
Forest Fires ◽  
Fire Risk ◽  
Initial Response ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Weather Index ◽  
Fire Weather Index ◽  
Keywords Internet ◽  
The Common ◽  
Civic Awareness ◽  
Municipal Level

Several of the fighting weaknesses evidenced by the forest fires tragedies of the last years are rooted in the disconnection between the current technical/scientific resources and the availability of the resulting information to operational agents on the ground. In order to be effective, a pre-emptive response to similar disasters must include the articulation between local authorities at municipal level - in prevention, preparedness and initial response - and the common citizen who is on the field, resides there, and has a deeper knowledge about the field of operation. This work intends to take a first step in the development of a tool that can serve to improve the civic awareness of all and to support the decision-making of the competent authorities. Keywords: Internet of things, Citizen science, Fire weather index

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