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  5. Assessing Seasonal Wildfire Forecasting Methods in Alaska

Assessing Seasonal Wildfire Forecasting Methods in Alaska

Assessing Alaska Fire Indices for Daily to Seasonal Wildfire Prediction Under Present and Future Climate Scenarios (Award Title)
Principal Investigator
Peter Bieniek

Dates

Start Date
2017-10-01
End Date
2020-03-31
Release Date
2017

Summary

In Alaska, increased wildfire activity has been linked to warming temperatures. Summers with extreme wildfire activity threaten life and property, clog the air with smoke, and challenge the state’s wildland firefighters. While the largest fires are often started by lightning and burn in remote areas, these fires require significant resources to fight when they threaten life and property. Increased wildfire activity is projected to continue in Alaska, as climate conditions change. Therefore, understanding how to best calculate fire risk based on short and long-term weather conditions is needed to improve fire season forecasts. Currently, Alaska’s fire managers rely on the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index to monitor and forecast [...]

Child Items (3)

Contacts

Principal Investigator :
Peter Bieniek
Co-Investigator :
Uma Bhatt, John Walsh, Scott Rupp, Robert Ziel
Funding Agency :
Alaska CSC
CMS Group :
Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASC) Program

Attached Files

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Fire_BorealForest_STRupp_AKCSC.jpg
“Boreal forest fire - Credit: Scott Rupp” 		thumbnail 170.79 KB image/jpeg

Purpose

Summers with extreme wildfire activity threaten life and property, clog the air with smoke, and challenge wildland firefighters in Alaska. While the largest fires are often started by lightning and burn in remote areas, these fires require significant resources to fight when they threaten life and property. The increased fire activity in Alaska is linked to a warming climate and projected continued warming will likely result in ever increasing wildfire danger. Improving our understanding of how to best quantify fire danger based on short and long-term weather conditions is needed to better forecast upcoming fire seasons months to decades in advance. Different approaches to quantify or index fire danger are utilized in Alaska versus the Contiguous United States. Additionally, researchers continue to develop new indices using cutting-edge technologies that offer new data. These different approaches need to be compared to see if the fire danger rating system that is currently used in Alaska works best or if there are ways it can be improved. Recently, high-resolution gridded climate observations have been made available that will help to compare the different fire danger systems and assess their utility across Alaska. Once we identify which indices work best to forecast Alaska fire danger we can evaluate how those indices may change under further warming and climate variability. With Alaska’s climate warming at twice the rate of the rest of the U.S., it is imperative that we improve our understanding of fire danger indices and how they may change in the future. This information will allow improved planning for how to allocate firefighting resources in the coming years and decades. We will work with the people who manage and forecast wildfires in Alaska to ensure that our research leads to direct action and helps them to improve their forecasts and decisions.

Project Extension

parts
typeTechnical Summary
valueOur proposed project will compute and evaluate multiple fire weather indices for Alaska using gridded downscaled data, and examine future projections of fire danger. Years with extreme wildfire activity in Alaska have increased in frequency in recent decades and are projected to continue to increase under climate change. Such extremes challenge fire management and highlight the need to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of different operational fire weather indices and to identify potential new indices aimed at reducing the uncertainty in forecasting fire danger and making informed management decisions. Quantifying the potential change in fire indices in the future will assist fire managers in planning for future wildfire activity. This project specifically addresses Alaska Fire Research Needs 02 “Fire Danger”, 03 “Climate Change”, and 09 “Weather” identified by the Alaska Wildland Fire Coordinating Group. We propose to compute the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System, National Fire Danger Rating System, Evaporative Demand Drought Index, Vapor Pressure Deficit, and Growing Season Index using 20 km gridded dynamically downscaled daily/hourly climate data. Historical (1979-2015) indices will be based on downscaled ERA-Interim reanalysis data and future (2016-2100) indices will be based on climate model projections. The gridded indices will be compared with station-derived indices and active fire information from remote sensing data for testing and validation. The skill of each index will be assessed to evaluate the performance of each under different fire weather conditions. Throughout this project we will engage the fire management community (facilitated by the Alaska Fire Science Consortium) and we will provide information and data to the fire managers through presentations and an online archive of the data files. The research team has two decades of experience in engaging Alaska fire managers and has extensive expertise with climate downscaling and studying Alaska climate variability and change. The expected outcome of this project is that Alaska fire managers will better understand the strengths and weaknesses of existing fire weather indices and how fire danger may change under future climate projections.
projectStatusCompleted

Budget Extension

annualBudgets
year2017
totalFunds133393.0
parts
typeAward Type
valueCooperative Agreement
typeAward Number
valueG17AC00363
totalFunds133393.0

Boreal forest fire - Credit: Scott Rupp
Boreal forest fire - Credit: Scott Rupp

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  • Alaska CASC
  • National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers

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Additional Information

Identifiers

Type Scheme Key
RegistrationUUID NCCWSC 7f6e7fa3-d2f0-450b-ba9f-aebbf3012184
StampID NCCWSC AK17-BP0895

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