title: Solar activity as a possible cause of large forest fires--a case study: analysis of the Portuguese forest fires.
abstract: Fires of large dimension destroy forests, harvests and housing objects. Apart from that combustion products and burned surfaces become large ecological problems. Very often fires emerge simultaneously on different locations of a region so a question could be asked if they always have been a consequence of negligence, pyromania, high temperatures or maybe there has been some other cause. This paper is an attempt of establishing the possible connection between forest fires that numerous satellites registered and activities happening on the Sun immediately before fires ignite. Fires emerged on relatively large areas from Portugal and Spain on August 2005, as well as on other regions of Europe. The cases that have been analyzed show that, in every concrete situation, an emission of strong electromagnetic and thermal corpuscular energy from highly energetic regions that were in geo-effective position had preceded the fires. Such emissions have, usually, very high energy and high speeds of particles and come from coronary holes that also have been either in the very structure or in the immediate closeness of the geo-effective position. It should also be noted that the solar wind directed towards the Earth becomes weaker with deeper penetration towards the topographic surface. However, the results presented in this paper suggest that, there is a strong causality relationship between solar activity and the ignition of these forest fires taking place in South-western Europe.
authors.affiliation: Chemical Engineering Department, IST - Instituto Superior Técnico, Torre Sul, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal. jgomes@deq.isel.ipl.pt
authors.forename: J F P
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Gomes
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Radovanovic
mesh_terms: D005390:Fires; D011174:Portugal; D019445:Solar Activity; D014197:Trees