The fire weather in Europe: large-scale trends towards higher danger

Autor: Jessica Hetzer, Matthew Forrest, Jaime Ribalaygua, Carlos Prado-López, Thomas Hickler
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: Environmental Research Letters, Vol 19, Iss 8, p 084017 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1748-9326
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad5b09
Popis: The climate over Europe has been recorded to be hotter, drier, and more fire-prone over the last decade than ever before, leading to concerns about how climate change will alter fire weather in the future. A typical measure to estimate fire weather severity based on climate is the Canadian fire weather index (FWI). In this study, we used high-resolution, bias-corrected climate model output (∼9 km) from six CMIP6 climate models and four shared socio-economic pathway projections (SSPs) to calculate consistent and comparable daily FWI datasets for Europe from 1950 to 2080. Our study aims to identify regional and large-scale shifts in fire weather severity and its predictability over time to support adaptive planning. We show that irrespective of the future SSP, fire weather will become more severe, but the increase is much stronger under high greenhouse gas emissions. This leads to new areas being exposed to severe fire weather, such as central Europe and rapidly warming mountainous areas. Already fire-prone regions in southern Europe will experience more extreme conditions. We conclude that only the low-emission SSP1-2.6 pathway can prevent strong increases in fire weather beyond the 2050s. Fire surveillance and management will become more important, even in areas and in seasons where they have not been in the focus so far.
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