Changing weather extremes call for early warnint of potential for catastrophic fire
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Date
2017
Authors
Boer, Matthias M.
Nolan, Rachael H.
Resco de Dios, Víctor
Clarke, Hamish
Price, Owen F.
Bradstock, Ross A.
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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 environ-
ments 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.
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Earth's Future, 2017, vol. 6, p. 1180-1186