Impact of climate variability on summer fires in a Mediterranean environment (northeastern Iberian Peninsula)

Turco, Marco; Llasat, Maria-Carmen; Hardenberg, Jost von; Provenzale, Antonello

Publication:
Impact of climate variability on summer fires in a Mediterranean environment (northeastern Iberian Peninsula)

dc.contributor.author	Turco, Marco
dc.contributor.author	Llasat, Maria-Carmen
dc.contributor.author	Hardenberg, Jost von
dc.contributor.author	Provenzale, Antonello
dc.contributor.department	Física
dc.date.accessioned	2024-02-08T07:41:12Z
dc.date.available	2024-02-08T07:41:12Z
dc.date.issued	2013
dc.description	©2013. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This document is the Accepted version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Climatic Change. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0505-6
dc.description.abstract	We analyse the impact of climate interannual variability on summer forest fires in Catalonia (northeastern Iberian Peninsula). The study period covers 25 years, from 1983 to 2007. During this period more than 16000 fire events were recorded and the total burned area was more than 240 kha, i.e. around 7.5% of whole Catalonia. We show that the interannual variability of summer fires is significantly correlated with summer precipitation and summer maximum temperature. In addition, fires are significantly related to antecedent climate conditions, showing positive correlation with lagged precipitation and negative correlation with lagged temperatures, both with a time lag of two years, and negative correlation with the minimum temperature in the spring of the same year. The interaction between antecedent climate conditions and fire variability highlights the importance of climate not only in regulating fuel flammability, but also fuel structure. On the basis of these results, we discuss a simple regression model that explains up to 76% of the variance of the Burned Area and up to 91% of the variance of the number of fires. This simple regression model produces reliable out-of-sample predictions of the impact of climate variability on summer forest fires and it could be used to estimate fire response to di↵erent climate change scenarios, assuming that climate-vegetation-humans-fire interactions will not change completely.	en
dc.format	application/pdf	es
dc.format.extent	15
dc.identifier.citation	Climatic Change (2013) 116:665–678
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0505-6
dc.identifier.issn	Print: 0165-0009
dc.identifier.issn	Electronic: 1573-1480
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10201/138923
dc.language	eng	es
dc.publisher	Springer
dc.relation	This work was supported by esTcena project (Exp. 200800050084078), a strategic action from Plan Nacional de I+D+i 2008-2011 funded by Spanish Ministry of Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino.	es
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	es
dc.rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/	*
dc.subject	Regional climate	en
dc.subject	Impact of climate change	en
dc.subject	Wildfires	en
dc.subject	Mediterranean areas	en
dc.title	Impact of climate variability on summer fires in a Mediterranean environment (northeastern Iberian Peninsula)	es
dc.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/article	es
dspace.entity.type	Publication	es