Increasing frequency of extreme fire weather in Canada with climate change

Wang, Xianli; Thompson, Dan K.; Marshall, Ginny; Tymstra, Cordy; Carr, Richard; Flannigan, Mike D.

doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1375-5

Cited by 165 publications

(118 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Fires in the interface will likely become even more of an issue 1 in the future for two main reasons: (1) increased fire activity due to climate change is predicted for most of Canada (Flannigan et al 2009;Wang et al 2015;Flannigan et al 2016); and (2) there will likely be more interface area due to changes in human land use (e.g. urban and rural sprawl, development of new industrial facilities, and increasing secondary home or cottage development) (Radeloff et al 2005;Bollman and Clemenson 2006;Peter et al 2006;Theobald and Romme 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

Johnston

Flannigan

2018

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Abstract. Destruction of human-built structures occurs in the 'wildland-urban interface' (WUI) -where homes or other burnable community structures meet with or are interspersed within wildland fuels. To mitigate WUI fires, basic information such as the location of interface areas is required, but such information is not available in Canada. Therefore, in this study, we produced the first national map of WUI in Canada. We also extended the WUI concept to address potentially vulnerable industrial structures and infrastructure that are not traditionally part of the WUI, resulting in two additional maps: a 'wildland-industrial interface' map (i.e. the interface of wildland fuels and industrial structures, denoted here as WUI-Ind) and a 'wildland-infrastructure interface' map (i.e. the interface of wildland fuels and infrastructure such as roads and railways, WUI-Inf). All three interface types (WUI, WUI-Ind, WUI-Inf) were defined as areas of wildland fuels within a variable-width buffer (maximum distance: 2400 m) from potentially vulnerable structures or infrastructure. Canada has 32.3 million ha of WUI (3.8% of total national land area), 10.5 million ha of WUI-Ind (1.2%) and 109.8 million ha of WUI-Inf (13.0%). The maps produced here provide a baseline for future research and have a wide variety of practical applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

Johnston

Flannigan

2018

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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“…Studies of the spatial distribution of wildland fires in the past have highlighted that the frequency and size of fires in Canada have continuously increased over the last 50 years or so in response to the ongoing global warming (e.g., Kasischke and Turetsky, 2006;Hessl, 2011;Girardin and Terrier, 2015). Concerns are now being raised about the increasing frequency and severity of extreme climatic events with further warming, which could lead to an increasing concentration of numerous large fires in time and space (Wang et al, 2015). Given these observations and projections, there is growing concern about the capacity of the boreal forest to recover from disturbances (Bond et al, 2004;IPCC, 2013;Kurz et al, 2013;Rogers et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The pyrogeography of eastern boreal Canada from 1901 to 2012 simulated with the LPJ-LMfire model

et al. 2018

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“…We do this by determining how much precipitation has to increase for every degree of warming to maintain the same fuel moisture code value. Additionally, we examine the frequency of extremes or frequency of exceeding a threshold in the fuel moisture as fire activity is driven by extreme fire weather (Wang et al 2015). For example, Podur and Wotton (2011) found that there was almost a 50 % probability of having a day of significant fire growth in the boreal forest region, given that a fire was spreading, occurred when the FFMC was above 92.6Lastly, we interpret the results in terms of future fuel moisture conditions based on temperature and precipitation changes from General Circulation Models (GCMs).…”

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confidence: 99%

Fuel moisture sensitivity to temperature and precipitation: climate change implications

et al. 2015

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The objective of this paper is to examine the sensitivity of fuel moisture to changes in temperature and precipitation and explore the implications under a future climate. We use the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System components to represent the moisture content of fine surface fuels (Fine Fuel Moisture Code, FFMC), upper forest floor (duff) layers (Duff Moisture Code, DMC) and deep organic soils (Drought Code, DC). We obtained weather data from 12 stations across Canada for the fire season during the 1971-2000 period and with these data we created a set of modified weather streams from the original data by varying the daily temperatures by 0 to +5°C in increments of 1°C and the daily precipitation from −40 to 40 % in increments of 10 %. The fuel moistures were calculated for all the temperature and precipitation combinations. When temperature increases we find that for every degree of warming, precipitation has to increase by more than 15 % for FFMC, about 10 % for DMC and about 5 % for DC to compensate for the drying caused by warmer temperatures. Also, we find in terms of the number of days equal to or above an FFMC of 91, a critical value for fire spread, that no increase in precipitation amount alone could compensate for a temperature increase of 1°C. Results from three General Circulation Models (GCMs) and three emission scenarios suggest that this sensitivity to temperature increases will result in a future with drier fuels and a higher frequency of extreme fire weather days.

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Increasing frequency of extreme fire weather in Canada with climate change

Cited by 165 publications

References 37 publications

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

The pyrogeography of eastern boreal Canada from 1901 to 2012 simulated with the LPJ-LMfire model

Fuel moisture sensitivity to temperature and precipitation: climate change implications

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