Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-51
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2023-51
13 Apr 2023
 | 13 Apr 2023
Status: this preprint is currently under review for the journal NHESS.

Climate change impacts on regional fire weather in heterogeneous landscapes of Central Europe

Julia Miller, Andrea Böhnisch, Ralf Ludwig, and Manuela I. Brunner

Abstract. Wildfires have reached an unprecedented scale in the Northern Hemisphere. The summers of 2021 and 2022 demonstrated the destructive power of wildfires especially in Northern America and Southern Europe. Global warming indicates that fire seasons will become more extreme and will extend to more temperate regions in northern latitudes in the future. Multiple studies claim that natural variability hides the trend of increasing fire danger in climate model simulations for future potentially fire-prone areas. Single Model Initial-Condition Large Ensembles (SMILEs) help scientists to distinguish climate trends from natural variability. So far, the SMILE framework has only been applied for fire danger estimation on a global scale. In this study, we use a regional SMILE of the Canadian regional climate model version 5 (CRCM5-LE) over Central Europe under the RCP 8.5 scenario from 1980 to 2099, to analyze fire danger trends in a currently not fire-prone area. We use the meteorological Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) as a fire danger indicator. The study area covers four heterogeneous landscapes, namely the Alps, the Alpine Foreland, the lowlands of the Southern German Escarpment and the Eastern Mountain Ranges of the Bavarian Forest. We demonstrate that the CRCM5-LE is a suitable dataset to disentangle climate trends from natural variability in a multivariate fire danger metric. Results show the strongest increases in the median (50th) and extreme (90th) percentile of the FWI in the northern parts of the study area in the summer months July and August, where high fire danger becomes the median condition and extremes occur earlier in the fire season. The southern parts of the study region are affected less strongly, but due to weaker variability in these regions, time of emergence (TOE) is reached there in the early 2040’s. In the northern parts, the climate change trend exceeds natural variability in the late 2040’s. We find that today’s threshold for a 100-year FWI event, will occur every 30 years by 2050 and every 10 years by 2099. Our results highlight Central Europe’s potential for severe fire events from a meteorological perspective and the need for fire management in the near future even in temperate regions.

Julia Miller et al.

Status: final response (author comments only)

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on nhess-2023-51', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 May 2023
    • AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Julia Miller, 24 Sep 2023
  • RC2: 'Comment on nhess-2023-51', Jatan Buch, 03 Jun 2023
    • AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Julia Miller, 24 Sep 2023
  • RC3: 'Comment on nhess-2023-51', Anonymous Referee #3, 07 Aug 2023
    • AC3: 'Reply on RC3', Julia Miller, 24 Sep 2023

Julia Miller et al.

Julia Miller et al.

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Short summary
In this study we assess the impact of climate change on fire danger trends in different landscapes of Central Europe by using the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) as a fire danger indicator. We find that today’s threshold for a 100-year FWI event, will occur every 30 years by 2050 and every 10 years by 2099. Further, high fire danger becomes the mean condition by 2099. This study highlights Central Europe’s potential for severe fire events from a meteorological perspective.
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