Publication Abstracts

Grillakis et al. 2022

Grillakis, M., A. Voulgarakis, A. Rovithakis, K.D. Seiradakis, A. Koutroulis, R.D. Field, M. Kasoar, A. Papadopoulos, and M. Lazaridis, 2022: Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area. Environ. Res. Lett., 17, no. 4, 045021, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1.

Wildfire is an integral part of the Earth system, but at the same time it can pose serious threats to human society and to certain types of ecosystems. Meteorological conditions are a key driver of wildfire activity and extent, which led to the emergence of the use of fire danger indices that depend solely on weather conditions. The Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) is a widely used fire danger index of this kind. Here, we investigate how good a predictor of observation-based burned area (BA) is the FWI for a variety of world regions. We group monthly BA by size for each GFED pyrographic region and find strong correlations of burned area anomalies with the FWI anomalies, as well as with the underlying deviations of various climate variables from their climatologies. We quantify the relative sensitivity of BA to each climate variable, finding that this relationship strongly depends on the pyrographic region and land type. Our results indicate that the BA anomalies strongly correlate to FWI anomalies at a GFED region scale, while from the individual climate variables that comprise the FWI, relative humidity and temperature are the most influential factors that affect the observed BA.

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BibTeX Citation

@article{gr08110o,
  author={Grillakis, M. and Voulgarakis, A. and Rovithakis, A. and Seiradakis, K. D. and Koutroulis, A. and Field, R. D. and Kasoar, M. and Papadopoulos, A. and Lazaridis, M.},
  title={Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area},
  year={2022},
  journal={Environmental Research Letters},
  volume={17},
  number={4},
  pages={045021},
  doi={10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1},
}

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RIS Citation

TY  - JOUR
ID  - gr08110o
AU  - Grillakis, M.
AU  - Voulgarakis, A.
AU  - Rovithakis, A.
AU  - Seiradakis, K. D.
AU  - Koutroulis, A.
AU  - Field, R. D.
AU  - Kasoar, M.
AU  - Papadopoulos, A.
AU  - Lazaridis, M.
PY  - 2022
TI  - Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area
JA  - Environ. Res. Lett.
JO  - Environmental Research Letters
VL  - 17
IS  - 4
SP  - 045021
DO  - 10.1088/1748-9326/ac5fa1
ER  -

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