Assessing fire danger synchronicity in Europe

This contribution seeks to better understand recent changes in synchronous fire danger across Europe that can overwhelm fire suppression capacity. We analyze the spatio-temporal synchronicity of fire danger in Europe over the period 1979-2021 based on the Canadian Fire Weather Index, one of the most commonly used fire indices globally (FWI; Vitolo et al. 2020). The daily synchronicity index indicates the total area with a level of FWI above 50, that represents the extreme fire danger threshold as classified by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). The annual mean surface affected by synchronicity extreme fire danger increased by about 100000 km² over the 42-year-long study period (i.e. 57% of the mean historical value). The expansion of synchronized fire potential can compromise fire management efforts.

References

Vitolo, C., Di Giuseppe, F., Barnard, C., Coughlan, R., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J., Libertá, G., & Krzeminski, B. (2020). ERA5-based global meteorological wildfire danger maps. Scientific data, 7(1), 1-11.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge funding through the project ONFIRE, grant PID2021-123193OB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033. A.G. thanks the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades of Spain for PhD contract FPU19/06536.