Estimation of Forest Fire Risk by Using Fire Weather Index in the MENA Region

Forest fires are naturals in the Mediterranean ecosystems. However, in the last decade, the number of wildfires has significantly increased in the Mediterranean basin along with climate change. Therefore, forecasts of this region by using fire indices are crucial to take necessary precautions. In the present study, the projected changes for the period 2070 - 2099 concerning the control period 1971 - 2000 were used to estimate forest fire risk by the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI). RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emission scenarios (IPCC) outputs of MPI-ESM-MR and HadGEM2-ES dynamically downscaled to 50 km for the CORDEX-MENA domain with the use of the RegCM4 were utilized. ERA-Interim observational data from ECMWF covering the period 1980-2012 were also used to test the performances of models. The output of MPI-ESM-MR gave more similar fire risk prediction with the reforecast of observational data (ERA-Interim). Thus, the MPI-ESM-MR model could be more suitable to estimate fire risk by FWI. According to future projection, forest fire risk will significantly increase throughout the region for the last 30 years of this century.