Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

0 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Global warming is shifting the relationships between fire weather and realized fire-induced CO₂ emissions in Europe.

ABSTRACT: Fire activity has significantly changed in Europe over the last decades (1980-2020s), with the emergence of summers attaining unprecedented fire prone weather conditions. Here we report a significant shift in the non-stationary relationship linking fire weather conditions and fire intensity measured in terms of CO₂ emissions released during biomass burning across a latitudinal gradient of European IPCC regions. The reported trends indicate that global warming is possibly inducing an incipient change on regional fire dynamics towards increased fire impacts in Europe, suggesting that emerging risks posed by exceptional fire-weather danger conditions may progressively exceed current wildfire suppression capabilities in the next decades and impact forest carbon sinks.

SUBMITTER: Carnicer J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9209447 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Publications

Global warming is shifting the relationships between fire weather and realized fire-induced CO<sub>2</sub> emissions in Europe.

Carnicer Jofre J Alegria Andrés A Giannakopoulos Christos C Di Giuseppe Francesca F Karali Anna A Koutsias Nikos N Lionello Piero P Parrington Mark M Vitolo Claudia C

Scientific reports 20220620 1

Fire activity has significantly changed in Europe over the last decades (1980-2020s), with the emergence of summers attaining unprecedented fire prone weather conditions. Here we report a significant shift in the non-stationary relationship linking fire weather conditions and fire intensity measured in terms of CO<sub>2</sub> emissions released during biomass burning across a latitudinal gradient of European IPCC regions. The reported trends indicate that global warming is possibly inducing an i ...[more]

PMID: 35725762

Similar Datasets

Shifting fish distributions in warming sub-Arctic oceans.

Project description:The distributional response of marine fishes to climate warming would be expected to be very different than that of homeothermic birds and mammals, due both to more direct thermal effects on poikilothermic fish physiology and on reduced habitat fragmentation. In this study, we use a combination of linear models and graphical tools to quantify three-dimensional distribution shifts in 82 fish species caught in 5390 standardized groundfish survey tows over a 22-year time frame in the highly-productive sub-Arctic waters around Iceland. Over a 1 °C range, temperature significantly modified the distributional centroids of 72% of all fish species, but had relatively little effect on diversity. Most of the geographic shifts were to the northwest, and there was no overall tendency to move to deeper waters. A doubling of species abundance significantly influenced the distribution of 62% of species, but lacked the poleward orientation observed with temperature increases. Stenothermal species, those near their upper or lower thermal limits, and those with restricted spatial ranges were most likely to shift their distribution in response to climate warming, while deepwater species were not. A 2-3 °C warming of marine waters seems likely to produce large-scale changes in the location of many sub-Arctic fisheries.

| S-EPMC7536214 | biostudies-literature

Global patterns of interannual climate-fire relationships.

Project description:Climate shapes geographic and seasonal patterns in global fire activity by mediating vegetation composition, productivity, and desiccation in conjunction with land-use and anthropogenic factors. Yet, the degree to which climate variability affects interannual variability in burned area across Earth is less understood. Two decades of satellite-derived burned area records across forested and nonforested areas were used to examine global interannual climate-fire relationships at ecoregion scales. Measures of fuel aridity exhibited strong positive correlations with forested burned area, with weaker relationships in climatologically drier regions. By contrast, cumulative precipitation antecedent to the fire season exhibited positive correlations to nonforested burned area, with stronger relationships in climatologically drier regions. Climate variability explained roughly one-third of the interannual variability in burned area across global ecoregions. These results highlight the importance of climate variability in enabling fire activity globally, but also identify regions where anthropogenic and other influences may facilitate weaker relationships. Empirical fire modeling efforts can complement process-based global fire models to elucidate how fire activity is likely to change amidst complex interactions among climatic, vegetation, and human factors.

| S-EPMC7134822 | biostudies-literature

A 1980-2018 global fire danger re-analysis dataset for the Canadian Fire Weather Indices.

Project description:This data descriptor documents a dataset containing over 38 years of global reanalysis of wildfire danger. It consists of seven fields to assess fuel moisture as well as fire behavior. The methodology employed to generate these data is based on the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Danger Rating and utilizes weather forcing from ERA-Interim, a global reanalysis dataset produced by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts. Global fire danger reanalysis data are used to quantify the climatological expectation of fire danger at a certain time of the year and for any location on the globe. It can be regarded as a complementary product to the fire danger forecasts issued daily by the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS) under the umbrella of the European Copernicus program.

| S-EPMC6390706 | biostudies-literature

Global warming favours light-coloured insects in Europe.

Project description:Associations between biological traits of animals and climate are well documented by physiological and local-scale studies. However, whether an ecophysiological phenomenon can affect large-scale biogeographical patterns of insects is largely unknown. Insects absorb energy from the sun to become mobile, and their colouration varies depending on the prevailing climate where they live. Here we show, using data of 473 European butterfly and dragonfly species, that dark-coloured insect species are favoured in cooler climates and light-coloured species in warmer climates. By comparing distribution maps of dragonflies from 1988 and 2006, we provide support for a mechanistic link between climate, functional traits and species that affects geographical distributions even at continental scales. Our results constitute a foundation for better forecasting the effect of climate change on many insect groups.

| S-EPMC4050276 | biostudies-literature

Human-driven greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions cause distinct regional impacts on extreme fire weather.

Project description:Attribution studies have identified a robust anthropogenic fingerprint in increased 21st century wildfire risk. However, the risks associated with individual aspects of anthropogenic aerosol and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, biomass burning and land use/land cover change remain unknown. Here, we use new climate model large ensembles isolating these influences to show that GHG-driven increases in extreme fire weather conditions have been balanced by aerosol-driven cooling throughout the 20th century. This compensation is projected to disappear due to future reductions in aerosol emissions, causing unprecedented increases in extreme fire weather risk in the 21st century as GHGs continue to rise. Changes to temperature and relative humidity drive the largest shifts in extreme fire weather conditions; this is particularly apparent over the Amazon, where GHGs cause a seven-fold increase by 2080. Our results allow increased understanding of the interacting roles of anthropogenic stressors in altering the regional expression of future wildfire risk.

| S-EPMC7801713 | biostudies-literature

Fire-driven disruptions of global soil biochemical relationships.

Project description:Fires alter the stability of organic matter and promote soil erosion which threatens the fundamental coupling of soil biogeochemical cycles. Yet, how soil biogeochemistry and its environmental drivers respond to fire remain virtually unknown globally. Here, we integrate experimental observations and random forest model, and reveal significant divergence in the responses of soil biogeochemical attributes to fire, including soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) contents worldwide. Fire generally decreases soil C, has non-significant impacts on total N, while it increases the contents of inorganic N and P, with some effects persisting for decades. The impacts of fire are most strongly negative in cold climates, conifer forests, and under wildfires with high intensity and frequency. Our work provides evidence that fire decouples soil biogeochemistry globally and helps to identify high-priority ecosystems where critical components of soil biogeochemistry are especially unbalanced by fire, which is fundamental for the management of ecosystems in a world subjected to more severe, recurrent, and further-reaching wildfires.

| S-EPMC11782626 | biostudies-literature

Soil nitrogen determines greenhouse gas emissions from northern peatlands under concurrent warming and vegetation shifting.

Project description:Boreal peatlands store an enormous pool of soil carbon that is dependent upon - and vulnerable to changes in - climate, as well as plant community composition. However, how nutrient availability affects the effects of climate and vegetation change on ecosystem processes in these nutrient-poor ecosystems remains unclear. Here we show that although warming promoted higher CH4 emissions, the concurrent addition of N counteracted most (79%) of this effect. The regulation effects of the vegetation functional group, associated with the substrate quality, suggest that CH4 emissions from peatlands under future warming will be less than expected with predicted shrub expansion. In contrast, N2O flux will be enhanced under future warming with predicted shrub expansion. Our study suggests that changes in greenhouse gas emissions in response to future warming and shifts in plant community composition depend on N availability, which reveals the complex interactions that occur when N is not a limiting nutrient.

| S-EPMC6472372 | biostudies-literature

Enhanced marine sulphur emissions offset global warming and impact rainfall.

Project description:Artificial fertilisation of the ocean has been proposed as a possible geoengineering method for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The associated increase in marine primary productivity may lead to an increase in emissions of dimethyl sulphide (DMS), the primary source of sulphate aerosol over remote ocean regions, potentially causing direct and cloud-related indirect aerosol effects on climate. This pathway from ocean fertilisation to aerosol induced cooling of the climate may provide a basis for solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering. In this study, we investigate the transient climate impacts of two emissions scenarios: an RCP4.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) control; and an idealised scenario, based on RCP4.5, in which DMS emissions are substantially enhanced over ocean areas. We use mini-ensembles of a coupled atmosphere-ocean configuration of CESM1(CAM5) (Community Earth System Model version 1, with the Community Atmosphere Model version 5). We find that the cooling effect associated with enhanced DMS emissions beneficially offsets greenhouse gas induced warming across most of the world. However, the rainfall response may adversely affect water resources, potentially impacting human livelihoods. These results demonstrate that changes in marine phytoplankton activity may lead to a mixture of positive and negative impacts on the climate.

| S-EPMC4543957 | biostudies-literature

Forecasting Global Fire Emissions on Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Time Scales.

Project description:Fire emissions of gases and aerosols alter atmospheric composition and have substantial impacts on climate, ecosystem function, and human health. Warming climate and human expansion in fire-prone landscapes exacerbate fire impacts and call for more effective management tools. Here we developed a global fire forecasting system that predicts monthly emissions using past fire data and climate variables for lead times of 1 to 6 months. Using monthly fire emissions from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) as the prediction target, we fit a statistical time series model, the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model with eXogenous variables (ARIMAX), in over 1,300 different fire regions. Optimized parameters were then used to forecast future emissions. The forecast system took into account information about region-specific seasonality, long-term trends, recent fire observations, and climate drivers representing both large-scale climate variability and local fire weather. We cross-validated the forecast skill of the system with different combinations of predictors and forecast lead times. The reference model, which combined endogenous and exogenous predictors with a 1 month forecast lead time, explained 52% of the variability in the global fire emissions anomaly, considerably exceeding the performance of a reference model that assumed persistent emissions during the forecast period. The system also successfully resolved detailed spatial patterns of fire emissions anomalies in regions with significant fire activity. This study bridges the gap between the efforts of near-real-time fire forecasts and seasonal fire outlooks and represents a step toward establishing an operational global fire, smoke, and carbon cycle forecasting system.

| S-EPMC7540459 | biostudies-literature

Increasing forest fire emissions despite the decline in global burned area.

Project description:Satellites have detected a global decline in burned area of grassland, coincident with a small increase in burned forest area. These contrasting trends have been reported in earlier literature; however, less is known of their impacts on global fire emission trends due to the scarcity of direct observations. We use an atmospheric inversion system to show that global fire emissions have been stable or slightly decreasing despite the substantial decline in global burned area over the past two decades caused by the carbon dioxide emission increase from forest fires offsetting the decreasing emissions from grass and shrubland fires. Forest fires are larger carbon dioxide sources per unit area burned than grassland fires, with a slow or incomplete follow-up recovery—sometimes no recovery due to degradation and deforestation. With fires expanding over forest areas, the slow recovery of carbon dioxide uptake over burned forest lands weakens land sink capacity, implying positive feedback on climate change.

| S-EPMC8462883 | biostudies-literature