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Research papers on Wildfires and climate change

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  2. Climate Change 2014 - Synthesis Report

    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change · 2015 · 5,323 citations

    The Synthesis Report (SYR) distils and integrates the findings of the three Working Group contributions to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most comprehensive assessment of climate change undertaken thus far by the IPCC: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis; Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability; and Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. The SYR also incorporates the findings of two Special Reports on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (2011) and on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (2011).

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  3. Changes in precipitation with climate change

    Kevin E. Trenberth · 2010 · Climate Research · 3,867 citations

    There is a direct influence of global warming on precipitation. Increased heating leads to greater evaporation and thus surface drying, thereby increasing the intensity and duration of drought. However, the water holding capacity of air increases by about 7% per 1C warming, which leads to increased water vapor in the atmosphere. Hence, storms, whether individual thunderstorms, extratropical rain or snow storms, or tropical cyclones, supplied with increased moisture, produce more intense precipitation events. Such events are observed to be widely occurring, even where total precipitation is decreasing: 'it never rains but it pours!' This increases the risk of flooding. The atmospheric and sur

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  4. IPCC, 2023: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland.

    Katherine Calvin, Dipak Dasgupta, Gerhard Krinner, et al. · 2023 · 3,577 citations

    The Synthesis Report (SYR) is a stand-alone synthesis of the most policy-relevant evidence from the scientific, technical, and socio-economic literature assessed in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The SYR distils and integrates the main findings of the three reports of the Working Groups of the IPCC during the AR6, and the three AR6 Special Reports into a concise document. It consists of a Summary for Policymakers and a longer report.

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  5. Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013

    W. Matt Jolly, Mark A. Cochrane, Patrick H. Freeborn, et al. · 2015 · Nature Communications · 2,198 citations

    Climate strongly influences global wildfire activity, and recent wildfire surges may signal fire weather-induced pyrogeographic shifts. Here we use three daily global climate data sets and three fire danger indices to develop a simple annual metric of fire weather season length, and map spatio-temporal trends from 1979 to 2013. We show that fire weather seasons have lengthened across 29.6 million km(2) (25.3%) of the Earth's vegetated surface, resulting in an 18.7% increase in global mean fire weather season length. We also show a doubling (108.1% increase) of global burnable area affected by long fire weather seasons (>1.0 σ above the historical mean) and an increased global frequency of lo

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  7. Critical Review of Health Impacts of Wildfire Smoke Exposure

    Colleen E. Reid, Michael Bräuer, Fay H. Johnston, et al. · 2016 · Environmental Health Perspectives · 1,446 citations

    BACKGROUND: Wildfire activity is predicted to increase in many parts of the world due to changes in temperature and precipitation patterns from global climate change. Wildfire smoke contains numerous hazardous air pollutants and many studies have documented population health effects from this exposure. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to assess the evidence of health effects from exposure to wildfire smoke and to identify susceptible populations. METHODS: We reviewed the scientific literature for studies of wildfire smoke exposure on mortality and on respiratory, cardiovascular, mental, and perinatal health. Within those reviewed papers deemed to have minimal risk of bias, we assessed the coherence and

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  8. Increasing western US forest wildfire activity: sensitivity to changes in the timing of spring

    A. L. Westerling · 2016 · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 1,369 citations

    Prior work shows western US forest wildfire activity increased abruptly in the mid-1980s. Large forest wildfires and areas burned in them have continued to increase over recent decades, with most of the increase in lightning-ignited fires. Northern US Rockies forests dominated early increases in wildfire activity, and still contributed 50% of the increase in large fires over the last decade. However, the percentage growth in wildfire activity in Pacific northwestern and southwestern US forests has rapidly increased over the last two decades. Wildfire numbers and burned area are also increasing in non-forest vegetation types. Wildfire activity appears strongly associated with warming and earl

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  9. Observed Impacts of Anthropogenic Climate Change on Wildfire in California

    Park Williams, John T. Abatzoglou, Alexander Gershunov, et al. · 2019 · Earth s Future · 1,110 citations

    Abstract Recent fire seasons have fueled intense speculation regarding the effect of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire in western North America and especially in California. During 1972–2018, California experienced a fivefold increase in annual burned area, mainly due to more than an eightfold increase in summer forest‐fire extent. Increased summer forest‐fire area very likely occurred due to increased atmospheric aridity caused by warming. Since the early 1970s, warm‐season days warmed by approximately 1.4 °C as part of a centennial warming trend, significantly increasing the atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (VPD). These trends are consistent with anthropogenic trends simulated by

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  10. Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes

    Tania Schoennagel, Jennifer K. Balch, Hannah Brenkert–Smith, et al. · 2017 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 783 citations

    Wildfires across western North America have increased in number and size over the past three decades, and this trend will continue in response to further warming. As a consequence, the wildland–urban interface is projected to experience substantially higher risk of climate-driven fires in the coming decades. Although many plants, animals, and ecosystem services benefit from fire, it is unknown how ecosystems will respond to increased burning and warming. Policy and management have focused primarily on specified resilience approaches aimed at resistance to wildfire and restoration of areas burned by wildfire through fire suppression and fuels management. These strategies are inadequate to add

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  11. Climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme autumn wildfire conditions across California

    Michael Goss, Daniel L. Swain, John T. Abatzoglou, et al. · 2020 · Environmental Research Letters · 652 citations

    Abstract California has experienced devastating autumn wildfires in recent years. These autumn wildfires have coincided with extreme fire weather conditions during periods of strong offshore winds coincident with unusually dry vegetation enabled by anomalously warm conditions and late onset of autumn precipitation. In this study, we quantify observed changes in the occurrence and magnitude of meteorological factors that enable extreme autumn wildfires in California, and use climate model simulations to ascertain whether these changes are attributable to human-caused climate change. We show that state-wide increases in autumn temperature (∼1 °C) and decreases in autumn precipitation (∼30%) ov

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  12. Changing wildfire, changing forests: the effects of climate change on fire regimes and vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, USA

    Jessica E. Halofsky, David L. Peterson, Brian J. Harvey · 2020 · Fire Ecology · 639 citations

    Abstract Background Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, USA) have been immense in recent years, capturing the attention of resource managers, fire scientists, and the general public. This paper synthesizes understanding of the potential effects of changing climate and fire regimes on Pacific Northwest forests, including effects on disturbance and stress interactions, forest structure and composition, and post-fire ecological processes. We frame this information in a risk assessment context, and conclude with management implications and future research needs. Results Large and severe fires in the Pacific Northwest are associated with warm and dr

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  15. High-severity wildfire potential – associating meteorology, climate, resource demand and wildfire activity with preparedness levels

    Alison C. Cullen, Travis Axe, Harry Podschwit · 2021 · International Journal of Wildland Fire · 26 citations

    National and regional preparedness level (PL) designations support decisions about wildfire risk management. Such decisions occur across the fire season and influence pre-positioning of resources in areas of greatest fire potential, recall of personnel from off-duty status, requests for back-up resources from other areas, responses to requests to share resources with other regions during fire events, and decisions about fuel treatment and risk reduction, such as prescribed burning. In this paper, we assess the association between PLs assigned at national and regional (Northwest) scales and a set of predictors including meteorological and climate variables, wildfire activity and the mobilisat

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  18. Understanding droughts under climate change in South America based on severity-duration-frequency curves and drought atlases

    Niklas Merz, Mariam Zachariah · 2025 · Climatic Change · 3 citations

    Abstract Droughts are among the most complex and costly natural disasters, with major impacts on environmental and socio-economic structures which are substantially influenced by anthropogenic factors. The continent of South America is particularly vulnerable and has experienced significant drought events over the past decade. The primary objective of this study is to enhance the understanding of droughts on this continent. Furthermore, it seeks to support the development of science-based decisions and strategies to mitigate the impacts of droughts on agriculture, water resources and wider socio-economic systems. To this end, Severity-Duration-Frequency (SDF) curves are dev

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