Assessments of Regional Climate Change and Land-Cover Change Impacts on Fire Weather in the United States

Abstract:

Wildland fire is recognized as one of the dominant disturbances affecting forests and grasslands throughout the United States (U.S.). The development of long-term wildland fire and fuel management strategies can be aided with an improved understanding of how climate and land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes could potentially affect the occurrence of atmospheric conditions favorable for extreme fire behavior and for prescribed-fire usage as a fuel reduction tactic. Using atmospheric reanalysis data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) dataset, current and projected LULC data from the U.S. Geological Survey, and regional climate simulations performed with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and a suite of North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) modeling systems, we have examined recent trends and potential future changes in fire-weather patterns driven by regional climate and LULC changes. This presentation highlights some of the key findings of the assessments, including the identification of specific areas in the U.S. where future climate conditions may lead to more extreme wildfire behavior as quantified by an operational fire-weather index. The implications for wildland fire and fuels management in the U.S. are also presented.