Where did the fires burn in Peloponnisos, Greece the summer of 2007? Evidence for a synergy of fuel and weather

Koutsias, Nikos; Arianoutsou, Margarita; Kallimanis, Athanasios S.; Mallinis, Giorgos; Halley, John M.; Dimopoulos, Panayotis

doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2011.12.006

Cited by 147 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…8), a figure in good agreement with burned area reports provided by the local Hellenic fire brigade (1899 km 2 ). The Peloponnese fires predominantly occurred in forested land, both coniferous and broadleaved forest, though some areas of shrublands, grasslands and olive groves were also affected (Veraverbeke et al, 2010;Koutsias et al, 2012). Such was their severity that 0.32 Tg (40 %) of the estimated mean annual carbon monoxide (CO) emissions for Greece overall were estimated to have been released by these fires alone (Turquety et al, 2009).…”

Section: Methodology For Modelling Emissions and Transport Of Smoke Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

LSA SAF Meteosat FRP products – Part 2: Evaluation and demonstration for use in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Roberts

Wooster

et al. 2015

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. Characterising the dynamics of landscape-scale wildfires at very high temporal resolutions is best achieved using observations from Earth Observation (EO) sensors mounted onboard geostationary satellites. As a result, a number of operational active fire products have been developed from the data of such sensors. An example of which are the Fire Radiative Power (FRP) products, the FRP-PIXEL and FRP-GRID products, generated by the Land Surface Analysis Satellite Applications Facility (LSA SAF) from imagery collected by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) series of geostationary EO satellites. The processing chain developed to deliver these FRP products detects SEVIRI pixels containing actively burning fires and characterises their FRP output across four geographic regions covering Europe, part of South America and Northern and Southern Africa. The FRP-PIXEL product contains the highest spatial and temporal resolution FRP data set, whilst the FRP-GRID product contains a spatio-temporal summary that includes bias adjustments for cloud cover and the nondetection of low FRP fire pixels. Here we evaluate these two products against active fire data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and compare the results to those for three alternative active fire products derived from SEVIRI imagery. The FRP-PIXEL product is shown to detect a substantially greater number of active fire pixels than do alternative SEVIRI-based products, and comparison to MODIS on a per-fire basis indicates a strong agreement and low bias in terms of FRP values. However, low FRP fire pixels remain undetected by SEVIRI, with errors of active fire pixel detection commission and omission compared to MODIS ranging between 9-13 % and 65-77 % respectively in Africa. Higher errors of omission result in greater underestimation of regional FRP totals relative to those derived from simultaneously collected MODIS data, ranging from 35 % over the Northern Africa region to 89 % over the European region. High errors of active fire omission and FRP underestimation are found over Europe and South America and result from SEVIRI's larger pixel area over these regions. An advantage of using FRP for characterising wildfire emissions is the ability to do so very frequently and in near-real time (NRT). To illustrate the potential of this approach, wildfire fuel consumption rates derived from the SEVIRI FRP-PIXEL product are used to characterise smoke emissions of the 2007 "mega-fire" event focused on Peloponnese (Greece) and used within the European Centre for the temporal and spatial dynamics of the plume very well, and that high temporal resolution emissions estimates such as those available from a geostationary orbit are important for capturing the sub-daily variability in smoke plume parameters such as aerosol optical depth (AOD), which are increasingly less well resolved using daily or coarser temporal resolution emissions data sets. Quantitative comparison o...

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Section: Methodology For Modelling Emissions and Transport Of Smoke Fmentioning

confidence: 99%

LSA SAF Meteosat FRP products – Part 2: Evaluation and demonstration for use in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Roberts

Wooster

et al. 2015

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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“…2c). So far, this constraint avoided the occurrence of "mixed FWT fires", which combine strong winds and hot temperatures and are considered as one of the most critical FWTs in southern latitude countries (Pereira et al, 2005;Koutsias et al, 2012;Fernandes et al, 2016). But the weather conditions associated with the "Calanques" fire in the northern Mediterranean (Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme wildfire events are linked to global-change-type droughts in the northern Mediterranean

Ruffault

Curt²,

Martin‐StPaul

et al. 2018

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

131

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Abstract. Increasing drought conditions under global warming are expected to alter the frequency and distribution of large and high-intensity wildfires. However, our understanding of the impact of increasing drought on extreme wildfires events remains incomplete. Here, we analyzed the weather conditions associated with the extreme wildfires events that occurred in Mediterranean France during the exceptionally dry summers of 2003 and 2016. We identified that these fires were related to two distinct shifts in the fire weather space towards fire weather conditions that had not been explored before and resulting from specific interactions between different types of drought and different fire weather types. In 2016, a long-lasting "press drought" intensified wind-driven fires. In 2003, a "hot drought" combining a heat wave with a press drought intensified heat-induced fires. Our findings highlight that increasing drought conditions projected by climate change scenarios might affect the dryness of fuel compartments and lead to a higher frequency of extremes wildfires events.

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“…As fire suppression has failed to mitigate extreme fire seasons (e.g., Portugal 2003Portugal , 2005Greece and Italy 2007), other fire management strategies should be considered. It is also evident that extreme climatic conditions contributed to the extension of fires into forests that were not considered to be fire-prone in the past (Koutsias et al 2012).…”

Section: Fire Fighting and Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptions of forest experts on climate change and fire management in European Mediterranean forests

Raftoyannis¹,

Nocentini²,

Marchi³

et al. 2014

iForest

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Climate change has already increased fire risk in Mediterranean forests. Adaptation options related to forest fires and climate change include measures related to fuel management, fire fighting and infrastructure, as well as public awareness. The importance of each of these measures was evaluated in six Mediterranean countries in a study initiated within the COST Action FP0703 “Expected Climate Change and Options for European Silviculture”. A questionnaire survey was used to document the views of foresters and forest scientists. Country differences were observed and adaptation measures related to fire fighting efficiency and public awareness were valued as more important than fuel management. Results were discussed in the light of a critical review of adaptive fire management measures with special reference to European Mediterranean countries

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Where did the fires burn in Peloponnisos, Greece the summer of 2007? Evidence for a synergy of fuel and weather

Cited by 147 publications

References 50 publications

LSA SAF Meteosat FRP products – Part 2: Evaluation and demonstration for use in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

LSA SAF Meteosat FRP products – Part 2: Evaluation and demonstration for use in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Extreme wildfire events are linked to global-change-type droughts in the northern Mediterranean

Perceptions of forest experts on climate change and fire management in European Mediterranean forests

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