What we have learned about wildfires and climate changes

Background/Question/Methods

In order to understand the effect of climate change on wildfires the causal connections must be established between fire occurrence, spread and behavior, and weather and climate processes.

Results/Conclusions

In this talk we will present what is known about boreal forest fire and how they are connected to large scale mid-tropospheric anomalies. When these anomalies persist for more than ~15 days (blocking high pressure systems) they create long periods of hot dry surface weather which dry fuels and cause large area burned. Global/hemispheric atmosphere and ocean/atmosphere circulation patterns such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Oscillation (closely linked to the Arctic Oscillation) together or separately explain large amounts of the variation in area burned in the last 40 years in the North American boreal forest. In recent years researchers have begun to understand the coupling of these two oscillators and the El Niño Southern Oscillator and the possible effects of climate warming on these patterns.