Sensitivity and evaluation of current fire risk and future projections due to climate change: the case study of Greece

Karali, Anna; Hatzaki, Maria; Giannakopoulos, Christos; Roussos, A.; Xanthopoulos, Gavriil; Tenentes, V.

doi:10.5194/nhess-14-143-2014

Cited by 54 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(34 reference statements)

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“…Fogarty et al, 1998;de Groot et al, 2005de Groot et al, , 2007Palheiro et al, 2006;Taylor and Alexander, 2006) and for distinguishing periods of high fire activity (e.g. Bedia et al, 2014;Karali et al, 2014;Venäläinen et al, 2014). Furthermore, the FWI System has been found to outperform or at least match the performance of other FDRSs in terms of highlighting high fire activity periods in non-native environments (e.g.…”

Section: The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Jong

Wooster

Kitchen

et al. 2016

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Wildfires in the United Kingdom (UK) pose a threat to people, infrastructure and the natural environment. During periods of particularly fire-prone weather, wildfires can occur simultaneously across large areas, placing considerable stress upon the resources of fire and rescue services. Fire danger rating systems (FDRSs) attempt to anticipate periods of heightened fire risk, primarily for earlywarning and preparedness purposes. The UK FDRS, termed the Met Office Fire Severity Index (MOFSI), is based on the Fire Weather Index (FWI) component of the Canadian Forest FWI System. The MOFSI currently provides daily operational mapping of landscape fire danger across England and Wales using a simple thresholding of the final FWI component of the Canadian FWI System. However, it is known that the system has scope for improvement. Here we explore a climatology of the six FWI System components across the UK (i.e. extending to Scotland and Northern Ireland), calculated from daily 2 km × 2 km gridded numerical weather prediction data and supplemented by long-term meteorological station observations. We used this climatology to develop a percentile-based calibration of the FWI System, optimised for UK conditions. We find this approach to be well justified, as the values of the "raw" uncalibrated FWI components corresponding to a very "extreme" (99th percentile) fire danger situation vary by more than an order of magnitude across the country. Therefore, a simple thresholding of the uncalibrated component values (as is currently applied in the MOFSI) may incur large errors of omission and commission with respect to the identification of periods of significantly elevated fire danger. We evaluate our approach to enhancing UK fire danger rating using records of wildfire occurrence and find that the Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC), Initial Spread Index (ISI) and FWI components of the FWI System generally have the greatest predictive skill for landscape fire activity across Great Britain, with performance varying seasonally and by land cover type. At the height of the most recent severe wildfire period in the UK (2 May 2011), 50 % of all wildfires occurred in areas where the FWI component exceeded the 99th percentile. When all wildfire events during the 2010-2012 period are considered, the 75th, 90th and 99th percentiles of at least one FWI component were exceeded during 85, 61 and 18 % of all wildfires respectively. Overall, we demonstrate the significant advantages of using a percentile-based calibration approach for classifying UK fire danger, and believe that our findings provide useful insights for future development of the current operational MOFSI UK FDRS.

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Section: The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Jong

Wooster

Kitchen

et al. 2016

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…Information from the ISI and BUI are combined to provide the numerical rating of fire intensity into FWI that is categorized into four fire danger classes (FWI < 8: low; FWI ≥ 8 and FWI < 17: medium; FWI ≥ 17 and FWI < 32: high; and FWI ≥ 32: extreme). The FWI has been widely tested and applied successfully across the Mediterranean Basin [49][50][51][52][53][54][55]. To avoid overlapping results, only one point from the RACMO2 model's outputs was used as representatively for the subsequent FWI statistical analysis; i.e., Point 1 (SW Messinia) covering the area where the majority of people and values-at-risk are located ( Figure 2).…”

Section: Simulation Inputs and Softwarementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To avoid overlapping results, only one point from the RACMO2 model's outputs was used as representatively for the subsequent FWI statistical analysis; i.e., Point 1 (SW Messinia) covering the area where the majority of people and values-at-risk are located ( Figure 2). Furthermore, after the calculation of the number of days with elevated fire risk (i.e., days with FWI ≥ 32) for all RCM grid points covering an extended area of southwestern Greece, maps were excerpted to portray the changes between the present and the future in the Messinia region, by implementing Kriging interpolation similarly to previous research [55]. For the quality assessment of the RCM data, a comparison of FWI values calculated using historical observations vs. FWI values calculated using model outputs (ensemble mean of the model for the nearest grid point) for the present period (1961-1990) was performed.…”

Section: Simulation Inputs and Softwarementioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Climate Change Projections on Forest Fire Behavior and Values-at-Risk in Southwestern Greece

Kalabokidis

Palaiologou

Gerasopoulos

et al. 2015

Forests

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Climate change has the potential to influence many aspects of wildfire behavior and risk. During the last decade, Greece has experienced large-scale wildfire phenomena with unprecedented fire behavior and impacts. In this study, thousands of wildfire events were simulated with the Minimum Travel Time (MTT) fire growth algorithm (called Randig) and resulted in spatial data that describe conditional burn probabilities, potential fire spread and intensity in Messinia, Greece. Present (1961-1990 and future (2071-2100) climate projections were derived from simulations of the KNMI regional climate model RACMO2, under the SRES A1B emission scenario. Data regarding fuel moisture content, wind speed and direction were modified for the different projection time periods to be used as inputs in Randig. Results were used to assess the vulnerability changes for certain values-at-risk of the natural and human-made environment. Differences in wildfire risk were calculated and results revealed that larger wildfires that resist initial control are to be expected in the future, with higher conditional burn probabilities and intensities for extensive parts of the study area. The degree of change in the modeled Canadian Forest 2215Fire Weather Index for the two time periods also revealed an increasing trend in frequencies of higher values for the future.

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“…Among them the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) (Stocks et al 1989, Forestry Canada Fire Danger Group, 1992) enjoys very broad use not only in the vast forests of Canada but also in other parts of the world including Europe where the System's Fire Weather Index (FWI) was evaluated favourably, among others, by Viegas et al (1999) in comparison with four other methods of fire danger evaluation, and was adopted since 2007 at the EU level by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/effis). The FWI was also evaluated favourably by Dimitrakopoulos et al (2011) and by Karali et al (2014) in Greece. Both these studies proposed FWI value classes for association with fire danger.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation of the weather conditions leading to large forest fires in the area around Athens, Greece

Xanthopoulos¹,

Roussos²,

Hatzaki³

et al. 2014

Advances in Forest Fire Research

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A navegação consulta e descarregamento dos títulos inseridos nas Bibliotecas Digitais UC Digitalis, UC Pombalina e UC Impactum, pressupõem a aceitação plena e sem reservas dos Termos e Condições de Uso destas Bibliotecas Digitais, disponíveis em https://digitalis.uc.pt/pt-pt/termos.Conforme exposto nos referidos Termos e Condições de Uso, o descarregamento de títulos de acesso restrito requer uma licença válida de autorização devendo o utilizador aceder ao(s) documento(s) a partir de um endereço de IP da instituição detentora da supramencionada licença.Ao utilizador é apenas permitido o descarregamento para uso pessoal, pelo que o emprego do(s) título(s) descarregado(s) para outro fim, designadamente comercial, carece de autorização do respetivo autor ou editor da obra.Na medida em que todas as obras da UC Digitalis se encontram protegidas pelo Código do Direito de Autor e Direitos Conexos e demais legislação aplicável, toda a cópia, parcial ou total, deste documento, nos casos em que é legalmente admitida, deverá conter ou fazer-se acompanhar por este aviso.Investigation of the weather conditions leading to large forest fires in the area around Athens, Greece Autor(es):Xanthopoulos, G.; Roussos, A.; Giannakopoulos, C.; Karali, A.; Hatzaki, M. AbstractLarge forest fires are of great concern in all fire prone countries. Understanding them and predicting the possibility for their occurrence can be very helpful for forest fire management. They usually occur under very adverse fire weather conditions so any investigation about them is sure to take this into consideration. The Fire Weather Index (FWI) of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System which enjoys very broad use not only in the vast forests of Canada but also in other parts of the world, is a composite index that represents fire weather conditions quite well. The study presented here is an investigation of the possibility to associate fire weather conditions, as captured by FWI, with the occurrence of large forest fires in the broader area around Athens, the capital of Greece. It is based on forest fire data from the Greek Fire Service for the 2003-2011 period, matched to FWI values for this period, calculated using gridded observation data from the ERA Interim data sets, that were interpolated using the Thin Plate Spline Technique in order to obtain high resolution (1 km) spatial analysis data. Correlations between FWI and burned area per fire proved to be very poor, precluding regression modelling, so an alternative analysis method was used in order to determine, according to the data for the study period, the minimum FWI above which it is possible for fires to exceed certain burned area thresholds.

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Sensitivity and evaluation of current fire risk and future projections due to climate change: the case study of Greece

Cited by 54 publications

References 41 publications

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Effect of Climate Change Projections on Forest Fire Behavior and Values-at-Risk in Southwestern Greece

Investigation of the weather conditions leading to large forest fires in the area around Athens, Greece

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