Past and future trends in fire weather for the UK

Perry, Matthew C.; Vanvyve, Emilie; Betts, Richard A.; Palin, Erika J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-559-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-559-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-559-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 2

Research article

|

21 Feb 2022

Research article |

| 21 Feb 2022

Past and future trends in fire weather for the UK

Matthew C. Perry, Emilie Vanvyve, Richard A. Betts, and Erika J. Palin

Data sets

The Collection 6 MODIS burned area mapping algorithm and product (https://lpdaacsvc.cr.usgs.gov/appeears/) Louis Giglio, Luigi Boschetti, David P. Roy, Michael L. Humber, and Christopher O. Justice https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2018.08.005

Fire danger indices historical data from the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/) Copernicus https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.0e89c522

UKCP18 regional projections on a 12 km grid over the UK for 1980–2080 Met Office Hadley Centre https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/ 589211abeb844070a95d061c8cc7f604

Short summary

In the past, wildfires in the UK have occurred mainly in spring, with occasional events during hot, dry summers. Climate models predict a large future increase in hazardous fire weather conditions in summer. Wildfire can be considered an emergent risk for the UK, as past events have not had widespread major impacts, but this could change. The large increase in risk between the 2 °C and 4 °C levels of global warming highlights the importance of global efforts to keep warming below 2 °C.