title: On the key role of droughts in the dynamics of summer fires in Mediterranean Europe.
abstract: Summer fires frequently rage across Mediterranean Europe, often intensified by high temperatures and droughts. According to the state-of-the-art regional fire risk projections, in forthcoming decades climate effects are expected to become stronger and possibly overcome fire prevention efforts. However, significant uncertainties exist and the direct effect of climate change in regulating fuel moisture (e.g. warmer conditions increasing fuel dryness) could be counterbalanced by the indirect effects on fuel structure (e.g. warmer conditions limiting fuel amount), affecting the transition between climate-driven and fuel-limited fire regimes as temperatures increase. Here we analyse and model the impact of coincident drought and antecedent wet conditions (proxy for the climatic factor influencing total fuel and fine fuel structure) on the summer Burned Area (BA) across all eco-regions in Mediterranean Europe. This approach allows BA to be linked to the key drivers of fire in the region. We show a statistically significant relationship between fire and same-summer droughts in most regions, while antecedent climate conditions play a relatively minor role, except in few specific eco-regions. The presented models for individual eco-regions provide insights on the impacts of climate variability on BA, and appear to be promising for developing a seasonal forecast system supporting fire management strategies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, 08028, Spain. turco.mrc@gmail.com.|Earth Science Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, 08028, Spain. turco.mrc@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8589-7459
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Turco
authors.affiliation: Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), National Research Council (CNR), Torino, 10133, Italy.
authors.forename: Jost
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: von Hardenberg
authors.affiliation: Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA.
authors.forename: Amir
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: AghaKouchak
authors.affiliation: Earth Science Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Barcelona, 08028, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria Carmen
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Llasat
authors.affiliation: Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (IGG), National Research Council (CNR), Pisa, 56124, Italy.
authors.forename: Antonello
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Provenzale
authors.affiliation: Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL), Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1749-016, Portugal.
authors.forename: Ricardo M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Trigo