Climate Change Significantly Alters Future Wildfire Mitigation Opportunities in Southeastern Australia

Virgilio, Giovanni Di; Evans, Jason P.; Clarke, Hamish; Sharples, Jason J.; Hirsch, Annette L.; Hart, Mary

doi:10.1029/2020gl088893

Cited by 22 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Yet, a lack of longterm, reliable observational record of above ground biomass prohibits the direct use of such key driving variable in the current analysis. Another example involves the effects of sub-grid topography, such as slope, aspect, and terrain ruggedness at a typical scale of several kilometers, on wildfire spread and intensity 63 . Future ESM development are encouraged to incorporate the subgrid topographic factors to improve their representation of wildfire regimes and facilitate better observational constraint.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine learning–based observation-constrained projections reveal elevated global socioeconomic risks from wildfire

Mao

Wullschleger

et al. 2022

Nat Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reliable projections of wildfire and associated socioeconomic risks are crucial for the development of efficient and effective adaptation and mitigation strategies. The lack of or limited observational constraints for modeling outputs impairs the credibility of wildfire projections. Here, we present a machine learning framework to constrain the future fire carbon emissions simulated by 13 Earth system models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6), using historical, observed joint states of fire-relevant variables. During the twenty-first century, the observation-constrained ensemble indicates a weaker increase in global fire carbon emissions but higher increase in global wildfire exposure in population, gross domestic production, and agricultural area, compared with the default ensemble. Such elevated socioeconomic risks are primarily caused by the compound regional enhancement of future wildfire activity and socioeconomic development in the western and central African countries, necessitating an emergent strategic preparedness to wildfires in these countries.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine learning–based observation-constrained projections reveal elevated global socioeconomic risks from wildfire

Mao

Wullschleger

et al. 2022

Nat Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the southeast US, Kupfer et al (2020) used climate models to project that the future frequency of suitable days for prescribed burning will decrease substantially in the summer months by the end of the twenty-first century compared with historical conditions. Similar efforts using regional climate models in Australia have also pointed toward a more constrained burn window in southeast Australia in future climates (Di Virgilio et al, 2020), however, the projections also vary regionally and with definition of suitable conditions for prescribed burning (H. Clarke, Gibson, et al, 2019;Clarke, Tran, et al, 2019). Other work has suggested that suppression capacity could be exceeded more regularly in future due to climate change in parts of Canada (Wotton et al, 2017).…”

Section: Humans Suppress Fire To Protect Lives and Assetsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Global and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire Under Climate Change

Jones

Abatzoglou

Veraverbeke

et al. 2022

Reviews of Geophysics

388

159

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent wildfire outbreaks around the world have prompted concern that climate change is increasing fire incidence, threatening human livelihood and biodiversity, and perpetuating climate change. Here we review current understanding of the impacts of climate change on fire weather (weather conditions conducive to the ignition and spread of wildfires) and the consequences for regional fire activity as mediated by a range of other bioclimatic factors (including vegetation biogeography, productivity and lightning) and human factors (including ignition, suppression, and land use). Through supplemental analyses, we present a stocktake of regional trends in fire weather and burned area (BA) during recent decades, and we examine how fire activity relates to its bioclimatic and human drivers.Fire weather controls the annual timing of fires in most world regions and also drives inter-annual variability in BA in the Mediterranean, the Pacific US and high latitude forests. Increases in the frequency and extremity of fire weather have been globally pervasive due to climate change during 1979-2019, meaning that landscapes are primed to burn more frequently. Correspondingly, increases in BA of ~50% or higher have been seen in some extratropical forest ecoregions including in the Pacific US and highlatitude forests during 2001-2019, though interannual variability remains large in these regions.Nonetheless, other bioclimatic and human factors can override the relationship between BA and fire weather. For example, BA in savannahs relates more strongly to patterns of fuel production or to the fragmentation of naturally fire-prone landscapes by agriculture. Similarly, BA trends in tropical forests relate more strongly to deforestation rates and forest degradation than to changing fire weather. Overall, BA has reduced by ~30% globally in the past two decades, due in large part to a ~40% decline in BA in African savannahs.According to climate models, the prevalence and extremity of fire weather has already emerged beyond its pre-industrial variability in the Mediterranean due to climate change, and emergence will become increasingly widespread at additional levels of warming. Moreover, several of the major wildfires experienced in recent years, including the Australian bushfires of 2019/2020, have occurred amidst fire weather conditions that were considerably more likely due to climate change.Current fire models incompletely reproduce the observed spatial patterns of BA based on their existing representations of the relationships between fire and its bioclimatic and human controls, and historical trends in BA also vary considerably across models. Advances in the observation of fire and understanding of its controlling factors are supporting the addition or optimisation of a range of processes in models.Overall, climate change is exerting a pervasive upwards pressure on fire globally by increasing the frequency and intensity of fire weather, and this upwards pressure will escalate with each increment of global warming. Improvements to ...

show abstract

“…Hazard reduction burns are an adaptation measure that is widely used to reduce forest fire risk in Australia by managing fuel load. Climate change impacts on temperature and fuel moisture in southeast Australia are expected to decrease the capacity to carry out hazard reduction burns in autumn, but increase the ability to carry out these burns in winter instead 115,116 . The importance of fuel dryness in preconditioning forest flammability provides information for early warning and preparedness for extreme fires 117 .…”

Section: Broader Context and Response Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia

Abram

Henley

Gupta

et al. 2021

Commun Earth Environ

Self Cite

480

291

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The 2019/20 Black Summer bushfire disaster in southeast Australia was unprecedented: the extensive area of forest burnt, the radiative power of the fires, and the extraordinary number of fires that developed into extreme pyroconvective events were all unmatched in the historical record. Australia’s hottest and driest year on record, 2019, was characterised by exceptionally dry fuel loads that primed the landscape to burn when exposed to dangerous fire weather and ignition. The combination of climate variability and long-term climate trends generated the climate extremes experienced in 2019, and the compounding effects of two or more modes of climate variability in their fire-promoting phases (as occurred in 2019) has historically increased the chances of large forest fires occurring in southeast Australia. Palaeoclimate evidence also demonstrates that fire-promoting phases of tropical Pacific and Indian ocean variability are now unusually frequent compared with natural variability in pre-industrial times. Indicators of forest fire danger in southeast Australia have already emerged outside of the range of historical experience, suggesting that projections made more than a decade ago that increases in climate-driven fire risk would be detectable by 2020, have indeed eventuated. The multiple climate change contributors to fire risk in southeast Australia, as well as the observed non-linear escalation of fire extent and intensity, raise the likelihood that fire events may continue to rapidly intensify in the future. Improving local and national adaptation measures while also pursuing ambitious global climate change mitigation efforts would provide the best strategy for limiting further increases in fire risk in southeast Australia.

show abstract

Climate Change Significantly Alters Future Wildfire Mitigation Opportunities in Southeastern Australia

Cited by 22 publications

References 47 publications

Machine learning–based observation-constrained projections reveal elevated global socioeconomic risks from wildfire

Machine learning–based observation-constrained projections reveal elevated global socioeconomic risks from wildfire

Global and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire Under Climate Change

Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About