Skilful forecasting of global fire activity using seasonal climate predictions

Nature Communications
Marco TurcoAntonello Provenzale

Abstract

Societal exposure to large fires has been increasing in recent years. Estimating the expected fire activity a few months in advance would allow reducing environmental and socio-economic impacts through short-term adaptation and response to climate variability and change. However, seasonal prediction of climate-driven fires is still in its infancy. Here, we discuss a strategy for seasonally forecasting burned area anomalies linking seasonal climate predictions with parsimonious empirical climate-fire models using the standardized precipitation index as the climate predictor for burned area. Assuming near-perfect climate predictions, we obtained skilful predictions of fire activity over a substantial portion of the global burnable area (~60%). Using currently available operational seasonal climate predictions, the skill of fire seasonal forecasts remains high and significant in a large fraction of the burnable area (~40%). These findings reveal an untapped and useful burned area predictive ability using seasonal climate forecasts, which can play a crucial role in fire management strategies and minimise the impact of adverse climate conditions.

References

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Citations

May 17, 2019·Scientific Reports·Krishna Prasad VadrevuChris Justice
Jun 11, 2020·Nature Communications·Yan YuYaoping Wang
Oct 12, 2019·Scientific Reports·Marco TurcoRicardo M Trigo

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Software Mentioned

R package SPEI
ecmwf
R “ Language and Environment for Statistical Computing ” ( R
Climate Data Operators
ENS
Matlab
GPCP
BESTENS

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