Coupled effects of climate teleconnections on drought, Santa Ana winds and wildfires in southern California

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2021Author
Rodrigues, Marcos
Ramírez, Joaquín
Silva, Carlos Alberto
Mariani, Michela
Ascoli, Davide
Suggested citation
Cardil Forradellas, Adrián;
Rodrigues, Marcos;
Ramírez, Joaquín;
Miguel Magaña, Sergio de;
Silva, Carlos Alberto;
Mariani, Michela;
Ascoli, Davide;
.
(2021)
.
Coupled effects of climate teleconnections on drought, Santa Ana winds and wildfires in southern California.
Science of The Total Environment, 2021, vol. 765, p. 142788..
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142788.
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Projections of future climate change impacts suggest an increase of wildfire activity in Mediterranean ecosystems,
such as southern California. This region is a wildfire hotspot and fire managers are under increasingly
high pressures to minimize socio-economic impacts. In this context, predictions of high-risk fire seasons are essential
to achieve adequate preventive planning. Regional-scale weather patterns and climatic teleconnections
play a key role in modulating fire-conducive conditions across the globe, yet an analysis of the coupled effects
of these systems onto the spread of large wildfires is lacking for the region. We analyzed seven decades
(1953–2018) of documentary wildfire records from southern California to assess the linkages between weather
patterns and large-scale climate modes using various statistical techniques, including Redundancy Analysis, Superposed
Epoch Analysis andWavelet Coherence.We found that high area burned is significantly associated with
the occurrence of adverse weather patterns, such as severe droughts and Santa Anawinds. Further,we document
how these fire-promoting events aremediated by climate teleconnections, particularly by the coupled effects of
El Niño Southern Oscillation and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
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Science of The Total Environment, 2021, vol. 765, p. 142788.European research projects
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