Climate change has increased the odds of extreme regional forest fire years globally

Regions across the globe have experienced devastating fire years in the past decade with far-reaching impacts. Here, we examine the role of antecedent and concurrent climate variability in enabling extreme regional fire years across global forests. These extreme years commonly coincided with extreme (1-in-15-year) fire weather indices (FWI) and featured a four and five-fold increase in the number of large fires and fire carbon emissions, respectively, compared with non-extreme years. Years with such extreme FWI metrics are 88-152% more likely across global forested lands under a contemporary (2011-2040) climate compared to a quasi-preindustrial (1851-1900) climate, with the most pronounced increased risk in…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: OAI-2019762, 2019762
• JF
  Joint Fire Science Program

  Award: 21-2-01-1
• NE
  Natural Environment Research Council

  Award: NE/ V01417X/1