In this section
@article{Keeping:2025:10.3389/ffgc.2025.1519836,
author = {Keeping, TR and ZHOU, B and Cai, W and Shepherd, TG and Prentice, IC and Van, Der Wiel K and Harrison, S},
doi = {10.3389/ffgc.2025.1519836},
journal = {Frontiers in Forests and Global Change},
title = {Present and future interannual variability in wildfire occurrence: a large ensemble application to the United States},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2025.1519836},
volume = {8},
year = {2025}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - Realistic projections of future wildfires need to account for both the stochastic nature of climate and the randomness of individual fire events. Here we adopt a probabilistic approach to predict current and future fire probabilities using a large ensemble of 1,600 modelled years representing different stochastic realisations of the climate during a modern reference period (2000–2009) and a future characterised by an additional 2°C global warming. This allows us to characterise the distribution of fire years for the contiguous United States, including extreme years when the number of fires or the length of the fire season exceeded those seen in the short observational record. We show that spread in the distribution of fire years in the reference period is higher in areas with a high mean number of fires, but that there is variation in this relationship with regions of proportionally higher variability in the Great Plains and southwestern United States. The principal drivers of variability in simulated fire years are related either to interannual variability in fuel production or atmospheric moisture controls on fuel drying, but there are distinct geographic patterns in which each of these is the dominant control. The ensemble also shows considerable spread in fire season length, with regions such as the southwestern United States being vulnerable to very long fire seasons in extreme fire years. The mean number of fires increases with an additional 2°C warming, but the spread of the distribution increases even more across three quarters of the contiguous United States. Warming has a strong effect on the likelihood of less fire-prone regions of the northern United States to experience extreme fire years. It also has a strong amplifying effect on annual fire occurrence and fire season length in already fire-prone regions of the western United States. The area in which fuel availability is the dominant control on fire occurrence increases substantially wit
AU - Keeping,TR
AU - ZHOU,B
AU - Cai,W
AU - Shepherd,TG
AU - Prentice,IC
AU - Van,Der Wiel K
AU - Harrison,S
DO - 10.3389/ffgc.2025.1519836
PY - 2025///
SN - 2624-893X
TI - Present and future interannual variability in wildfire occurrence: a large ensemble application to the United States
T2 - Frontiers in Forests and Global Change
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2025.1519836
UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/forests-and-global-change/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2025.1519836/full
VL - 8
ER -
Interested in studying a PhD at the Department of Life Sciences? Find out more about postgraduate research opportunties.