Prescribed Fire Opportunities in the European Mediterranean under Climate Change

Prescribed fire is the intentional use of fire under specific environmental conditions used to achieve specific land management objectives. Across the European Mediterranean basin, it is used for hazardous fuel reduction, pastoralism, habitat restoration, and silviculture. However, the ability to conduct prescribed burns is limited by meteorological conditions that facilitate the desired fire behavior to achieve the burns’ objectives, or the “burning window”. Under climate change, the continued availability of these conditions is highly uncertain as changes in the frequency and timing of these conditions are expected to occur. This presents a major challenge to future fire management planning. Here, we use projections of future climate based on scaling factors derived from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) and applied to ERA5 meteorology to quantify future changes in days suitable for prescribed burns (RxB days) across Mediterranean Europe. We find a 14% (-12 days) decrease in the number of RxB days across the region at a global warming level of 3.0°C, with losses most pronounced from April to October, particularly at the end of the spring burning window (May-June) and the beginning of the fall burning window (September-October). While some regions see an increase in winter burn days, these gains are outweighed by reduced burn days throughout the year. Future reductions in burn days were limited to 5% at 1.5°C, consistent with the commitments made in the Paris Agreement. Our results suggest that fire managers can expect a decline in opportunities to conduct prescribed burns, especially under higher warming scenarios. Thus, its continued use under these conditions will likely require significant investments and changes to current fire management policies to utilize and scale up remaining prescribed burning opportunities.