Institutional Repository
Technical University of Crete
EN  |  EL

Search

Browse

My Space

Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area

Grillakis Emmanouil, Voulgarakis Apostolos, Rovithakis Anastasios, Seiradakis Konstantinos, Koutroulis Aristeidis, Field Robert D, Kasoar Matthew, Papadopoulos Athanasios, Lazaridis Michail

Simple record


URIhttp://purl.tuc.gr/dl/dias/3F7DACF7-4CE6-4A1A-9FB7-1907D2B23B44-
Identifierhttps://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1-
Identifierhttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1-
Languageen-
Extent10 pagesen
TitleClimate drivers of global wildfire burned areaen
CreatorGrillakis Emmanouilen
CreatorΓρυλλακης Εμμανουηλel
CreatorVoulgarakis Apostolosen
CreatorΒουλγαρακης Αποστολοςel
CreatorRovithakis Anastasiosen
CreatorΡοβιθακης Αναστασιοςel
CreatorSeiradakis Konstantinosen
CreatorΣειραδακης Κωνσταντινοςel
CreatorKoutroulis Aristeidisen
CreatorΚουτρουλης Αριστειδηςel
CreatorField Robert Den
CreatorKasoar Matthewen
CreatorPapadopoulos Athanasiosen
CreatorΠαπαδοπουλος Αθανασιοςel
CreatorLazaridis Michailen
CreatorΛαζαριδης Μιχαηλel
PublisherIOP Publishingen
DescriptionThis work was funded by the CLIMPACT—National Research Network on Climate Change and its Impacts project, financed by the Public Investment Program of Greece and supervised by General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT).en
Content SummaryWildfire is an integral part of the Earth system, but at the same time it can pose serious threats to human society and to certain types of terrestrial ecosystems. Meteorological conditions are a key driver of wildfire activity and extent, which led to the emergence of the use of fire danger indices that depend solely on weather conditions. The Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is a widely used fire danger index of this kind. Here, we evaluate how well the FWI, its components, and the climate variables from which it is derived, correlate with observation-based burned area (BA) for a variety of world regions. We use a novel technique, according to which monthly BA are grouped by size for each Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) pyrographic region. We find strong correlations of BA anomalies with the FWI anomalies, as well as with the underlying deviations from their climatologies for the four climate variables from which FWI is estimated, namely, temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind. We quantify the relative sensitivity of the observed BA to each of the four climate variables, finding that this relationship strongly depends on the pyrographic region and land type. Our results indicate that the BA anomalies strongly correlate with FWI anomalies at a GFED region scale, compared to the strength of the correlation with individual climate variables. Additionally, among the individual climate variables that comprise the FWI, relative humidity and temperature are the most influential factors that affect the observed BA. Our results support the use of the composite fire danger index FWI, as well as its sub-indices, the Build-Up Index (BUI) and the Initial Spread Index (ISI), comparing to single climate variables, since they are found to correlate better with the observed forest or non-forest BA, for the most regions across the globe.en
Type of ItemΕπιστολήel
Type of ItemLetteren
Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/en
Date of Item2024-02-27-
Date of Publication2022-
SubjectWildfireen
SubjectCanadian Fire Weather Index (FWI)en
SubjectObservation-based burned area (BA)en
SubjectGlobal Fire Emissions Database (GFED)en
SubjectBuild-Up Index (BUI)en
SubjectInitial Spread Index (ISI)en
Bibliographic CitationM. Grillakis, A. Voulgarakis, A. Rovithakis, K. D Seiradakis, A. Koutroulis, R. D Field, M. Kasoar, A. Papadopoulos and M. Lazaridis, “Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area,” Environ. Res. Lett., vol. 17, no. 4, Apr. 2022, doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1.en

Available Files

Services

Statistics