Publication: Skilful forecasting of global fire activity using seasonal climate predictions
Authors
Turco, Marco ; Jerez, Sonia ; Doblas Reyes, Francisco J. ; AghaKouchak, Amir ; Llasat, María Carmen ; Provenzale, Antonello
item.page.secondaryauthor
item.page.director
Publisher
publication.page.editor
publication.page.department
DOI
10.1038/s41467-018-05250-0
item.page.type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the
article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Abstract
Societal exposure to large fires has been increasing in recent years. Estimating the expected fire activity a few months in advance would allow reducing environmental and socio-economic impacts through short-term adaptation and response to climate variability and change. However, seasonal prediction of climate-driven fires is still in its infancy. Here, we discuss a strategy for seasonally forecasting burned area anomalies linking seasonal climate predictions with parsimonious empirical climate–fire models using the standardized precipitation index as the climate predictor for burned area. Assuming near-perfect climate predictions, we obtained skillful predictions of fire activity over a substantial portion of the global burnable area (~60%). Using currently available operational seasonal climate predictions, the skill of fire seasonal forecasts remains high and significant in a large fraction of the burnable area (~40%). These findings reveal an untapped and useful burned area predictive ability using seasonal climate forecasts, which can play a crucial role in fire management strategies and minimize the impact of adverse climate conditions.
publication.page.subject
Citation
Nature Communications (2018) 9:2718
item.page.embargo
Collections
Ir a Estadísticas
Este ítem está sujeto a una licencia Creative Commons. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/