Contribution to the Study of Forest Fires in Semi-Arid Regions with the Use of Canadian Fire Weather Index Application in Greece

Autor: Nikolaos Ntinopoulos, Marios Spiliotopoulos, Lampros Vasiliades, Nikitas Mylopoulos
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Climate; Volume 10; Issue 10; Pages: 143
ISSN: 2225-1154
DOI: 10.3390/cli10100143
Popis: Forest fires are of critical importance in the Mediterranean region. Fire weather indices are meteorological indices that produce information about the impact as well as the characteristics of a fire event in an ecosystem and have been developed for that reason. This study explores the spatiotemporal patterns of the FWI system within a study area defined by the boundaries of the Greek state. The FWI has been calculated and studied for current and future periods using data from the CFSR reanalysis model from the National Centers for Environmental Protection (NCEP) as well as data from NASA satellite programs and the European Commission for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECWMF) in the form of netCDF files. The calculation and processing of the results were conducted in the Python programming language, and additional drought- and fire-related indices were calculated, such as the standardized precipitation index (SPI), number of consecutive 50-day dry periods (Dry50), the Fosberg fire weather index (FFWI), the days where the FWI exceeds values of 40 and 50 days (FWI > 40) and (days FWI > 50). Similar patterns can easily be noted for all indices that seem to have their higher values concentrated in the southeast of the country owing to the higher temperatures and more frequent drought events that affect the indices’ behavior in both the current and future periods.
Databáze: OpenAIRE