Attribution of the Influence of Human‐Induced Climate Change on an Extreme Fire Season

Kirchmeier‐Young, Megan C.; Gillett, Nathan P.; Zwiers, Francis W.; Cannon, Alex J.; Anslow, F. S.

doi:10.1029/2018ef001050

Cited by 186 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Abatzoglou and Williams (2016) found that for the western United States human-caused climate change more than halved humidity of forest fuels since the 1970s and doubled the cumulative area of forest fires since 1984. A recent study by Kirchmeier-Young et al, (2018) found a strong influence of climate change on the 2017 British Columbia wildfires, with 50 such events being 2-4 times more likely with climate change in the CanESM2 model. Abatzoglou et al (2018) found that increases in extreme fire weather days due to anthropogenic climate change are evident on 22% of burnable land area globally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attribution of the role of climate change in the forest fires in Sweden 2018

Krikken

Lehner

Haustein

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. In this study we analyse the role of climate change in the forest fires that raged through large parts of Sweden in the summer of 2018 from a meteorological perspective. This is done by studying the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) based on sub-daily data, both in reanalysis datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA5, JMA55 and MERRA2) and three large ensemble climate models (EC-Earth, W@H and CESM) simulations. The FWI based on reanalysis correlates well with observed area burned in summer (r = 0.6 to 0.8). We find that the maximum forest fire risk in July 2018 had return times of ∼ 24 years for Southern and Northern Sweden. Further, we find a negative trend of the FWI for Southern Sweden over the 1979 to 2017 time period, yielding a decreasing risk of such an event solely based on reanalysis data. However, given the short observational record, large uncertainty between the reanalysis products and large natural variability of the FWI we cannot draw robust conclusions from reanalysis data. The 3 large-ensembles with climate models on the other hand point to a roughly 1.1 times increased risk for such events in the current climate relative to pre-industrial climate. For a future climate (2C warming) we find a roughly 2 times increased risk for such events relative to pre-industrial climate. The increased fire weather risk is mainly attributed to the increase in temperature. The other main factor, precipitation during summer months, is projected to increase for Northern Sweden, and decrease for Southern Sweden. We however do not find a clear change of prolonged dry periods in summer months that could explain the increased fire weather risk. In summary, we find a small but positive role of global warming up to now in the 2018 forest fires in Sweden, but a more robust increase in the risk for such events in the future.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attribution of the role of climate change in the forest fires in Sweden 2018

Krikken

Lehner

Haustein

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…In the record‐breaking 2017 extreme wildfire season in British Columbia, Canada, over 1.2 million ha burned. Human impacts of these fires included displacement of over 65,000 people, as well as impacts on human health and air quality . Extreme warmth and dryness are regarded as key contributing factors to wildfires, and July–August were anomalously hotter and dryer that year than any other year in the analyzed record, which began in 1961.…”

Section: Case Studies Of Extreme Events: Environmental Catastrophes Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extreme warmth and dryness are regarded as key contributing factors to wildfires, and July–August were anomalously hotter and dryer that year than any other year in the analyzed record, which began in 1961. Using a large ensemble of simulations performed with a regional climate model, Kirchmeier‐Young et al . argue that the wildfires were partially attributable to climate change and made substantially more probable in light of anthropogenic warming.…”

Section: Case Studies Of Extreme Events: Environmental Catastrophes Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While both dryness and warmth are conducive to fire risk, Kirchmeier‐Young et al . found that in their model simulations, there was no detectable effect of climate change on precipitation in this region.…”

Section: Case Studies Of Extreme Events: Environmental Catastrophes Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For all of the fire indices, “60–90% of the risk … and a factor of 2–4 increase in the likelihood … of the extreme values from 2017 can be attributed to anthropogenic influences” (p. 6 of Ref. ). However, precipitation can certainly be affected by climate change, and the summertime changes in that region are highly uncertain (Fig.…”

Section: Case Studies Of Extreme Events: Environmental Catastrophes Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental catastrophes, climate change, and attribution

Lloyd

Shepherd

2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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In our discussion of environmental and ecological catastrophes or disasters resulting from extreme weather events, we unite disparate literatures, the biological and the physical. Our goal is to tie together biological understandings of extreme environmental events with physical understandings of extreme weather events into joint causal accounts. This requires fine‐grained descriptions, in both space and time, of the ecological, evolutionary, and biological moving parts of a system together with fine‐grained descriptions, also in both space and time, of the extreme weather events. We find that both the “storyline” approach to extreme event attribution and the probabilistic “risk‐based” approach have uses in such descriptions. However, the storyline approach is more readily aligned with the forensic approach to evidence that is prevalent in the ecological literature, which cultivates expert‐based rules of thumb, that is, heuristics, and detailed methods for analyzing causes and mechanisms. We introduce below a number of preliminary examples of such studies as instances of what could be pursued in the future in much more detail.

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et al. 2022

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This article focuses on the importance of collaboration in statistics by Canadian researchers and highlights the contributions that Canadian statisticians have made to many research areas in environmetrics. We provide a discussion about different vehicles that have been developed for collaboration by Canadians in the environmetrics context as well as specific scientific areas that are focused on environmetrics research in Canada including climate science, forestry, and fisheries, which are areas of importance for natural resources in Canada.Résumé: Cet article souligne l'ampleur de la collaboration entre les scientifiques canadiens dans le domaine de la statistique et présente un survol des travaux réalisés par des spécialistes du sujet sur un ensemble de thèmes liés aux sciences de l'environnement. Les auteurs relatent différents moyens par lesquels cette collaboration s'est incarnée et a permis aux Canadiennes et Canadiens de contribuer à l'environnemétrie et à divers domaines connexes, notamment les sciences du climat, la foresterie et les pêches, dont l'importance est capitale pour la gestion des ressources naturelles du pays.

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Attribution of the Influence of Human‐Induced Climate Change on an Extreme Fire Season

Cited by 186 publications

References 47 publications

Attribution of the role of climate change in the forest fires in Sweden 2018

Attribution of the role of climate change in the forest fires in Sweden 2018

Environmental catastrophes, climate change, and attribution

Canadian contributions to environmetrics

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