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Skilful forecasting of global fire activity using seasonal climate predictions



Details

  • Journal Title:
    Nature Communications
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
    OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research)
  • Description:
    Societal exposure to large fires has been increasing in recent years. Estimating the expected fire activity a few months in advance would allow reducing environmental and socio-economic impacts through short-term adaptation and response to climate variability and change. However, seasonal prediction of climate-driven fires is still in its infancy. Here, we discuss a strategy for seasonally forecasting burned area anomalies linking seasonal climate predictions with parsimonious empirical climate-fire models using the standardized precipitation index as the climate predictor for burned area. Assuming near-perfect climate predictions, we obtained skilful predictions of fire activity over a substantial portion of the global burnable area (similar to 60%). Using currently available operational seasonal climate predictions, the skill of fire seasonal forecasts remains high and significant in a large fraction of the burnable area (similar to 40%). These findings reveal an untapped and useful burned area predictive ability using seasonal climate forecasts, which can play a crucial role in fire management strategies and minimise the impact of adverse climate conditions.
  • Keywords:
  • Source:
    Nature Communications 9 (2718)
  • DOI:
  • Pubmed Central ID:
    PMC6045620
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Funding:
    Grant no. NA14OAR4310222
  • Rights Information:
    CC BY
  • Compliance:
    PMC
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha-512:82001d73dcc9241d734749e8a943d25f0b6744e020b96662173286c1950acc13ecd53117ee52212f08963eedaca52aaddf540d707c7ba13c00b2b03279ea4b03
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 3.69 MB ]
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