The DOI matches its Crossref record; 14 of the 14 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme autumn wildfire conditions across California
Open accessAbstract
California has experienced devastating autumn wildfires in recent years. These autumn wildfires have coincided with extreme fire weather conditions during periods of strong offshore winds coincident with unusually dry vegetation enabled by anomalously warm conditions and late onset of autumn precipitation. In this study, we quantify observed changes in the occurrence and magnitude of meteorological factors that enable extreme autumn wildfires in California, and use climate model simulations to ascertain whether these changes are attributable to human-caused climate change. We show that state-wide increases in autumn temperature (∼1 °C) and decreases in autumn precipitation (∼30%) over the past four decades have contributed to increases in aggregate fire weather indices (+20%). As a result, the observed frequency of autumn days with extreme (95th percentile) fire weather—which we show are preferentially associated with extreme autumn wildfires—has more than doubled in California since the early 1980s. We further find an increase in the climate model-estimated probability of these extreme autumn conditions since ∼1950, including a long-term trend toward increased same-season co-occurrence of extreme fire weather conditions in northern and southern California. Our climate model analyses suggest that continued climate change will further amplify the number of days with extreme fire weather by the end of this century, though a pathway consistent with the UN Paris commitments would substantially curb that increase. Given the acute societal impacts of extreme autumn wildfires in recent years, our findings have critical relevance for ongoing efforts to manage wildfire risks in California and other regions.
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Citations
Cites
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Warming and earlier spring increase western U.S. forest wildfire activity.
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BackgroundParis Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C
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“Climate model simulations further suggest that continuedwarming and strengthening of seasonal drying trends in the future will likely result in further increases in extreme autumn fire weather conditions throughout California—even for a future climate scenario similar to that which would result from adherence to commi…”
BackgroundImpact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests
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Self-citationWidespread increase of tree mortality rates in the western United States
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BackgroundA Project for Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity
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Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States
Balch, J. K., Bradley, B. A., Abatzoglou, J. T., Nagy, R. C., Fusco, E. J., & Mahood, A. L. (2017) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1617394114 · Cited by 1,043
Self-citationGlobal Emergence of Anthropogenic Climate Change in Fire Weather Indices
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Self-citationManaging forests and fire in changing climates
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Cited by
Global and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire Under Climate Change
Jones, M. W., Abatzoglou, J. T., Veraverbeke, S., Andela, N., Lasslop, G., Forkel, M., Smith, A. J. P., Burton, C., Betts, R. A., van der Werf, G. R., et al. (2022) · Reviews of Geophysics · doi:10.1029/2020rg000726 · Cited by 1,332
Self-citationExtreme weather impacts of climate change: an attribution perspective
Clarke, B., Otto, F., Stuart-Smith, R., & Harrington, L. (2022) · Environmental Research: Climate · doi:10.1088/2752-5295/ac6e7d · Cited by 573
Spatial and temporal expansion of global wildland fire activity in response to climate change
Senande-Rivera, M., Insua-Costa, D., & Miguez-Macho, G. (2022) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-022-28835-2 · Cited by 391
Building community resilience in a context of climate change: The role of social capital
Carmen, E., Fazey, I., Ross, H., Bedinger, M., Smith, F. M., Prager, K., McClymont, K., & Morrison, D. (2022) · Ambio · doi:10.1007/s13280-021-01678-9 · Cited by 371
Global increase in wildfire risk due to climate‐driven declines in fuel moisture
Ellis, T. M., Bowman, D. M. J. S., Jain, P., Flannigan, M. D., & Williamson, G. J. (2022) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.16006 · Cited by 346
Metadata
- Authors
- Goss, M., Swain, D. L., Abatzoglou, J. T., Sarhadi, A., Kolden, C. A., Williams, A. P., & Diffenbaugh, N. S.
- Venue
- Environmental Research Letters
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2020-08-20
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 094016
- ISSN
- 1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3014271588
- Cited by
- 642
- References
- 14
- FWCI
- 34.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
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