Recent wildfires in the western United States (US) have led to substantial economic losses and social stresses. There is a great concern that the new climatic state may further increase the intensity, duration, and frequency of wildfires. To examine historical wildfire trends, we analyzed a total of 183,970 observed wildfire events over the conterminous United States (CONUS) for the last 33 years (1984-2016). While the annual number of all wildfire events has decreased (-16%), the number of large wildfires has increased significantly (+64%). Five commonly used fire danger indices (FDIs) that incorporate weather and fuel conditions are calculated at 4 km using a high-quality observational dataset. Results show that higher values of FDIs correlate to larger total fire size; this relationship is more robust for predicting wildfire size on larger scales. To assess the climate change impacts on future fire activities, we further calculate mid- and end-of- century FDIs using regional climate model simulations at 12 km. Multiple climate model simulations project increasing wildfire potential and longer fire seasons over broader areas based on the estimated FDIs. In addition to relative humidity, temperature and precipitation, wind speed is important in the instance of high fire danger.
Yan Feng
Dr. Feng is a Principal Atmospheric and Climate Scientist at Argonne, and a Scientist at Large with Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering, University of Chicago. She also has a Graduate Faculty Scholar appointment at the Northern Illinois University.
Dr. Feng’s research focuses on global and regional modeling of aerosols, clouds, and interactions with climate change, air pollution, and biogeochemical cycle. She has 40+ peer-reviewed journal publications including Nature Geoscience, PNAS, and Geophysical Research Letters, and co-authored three book chapters. Her work has 4200+ citations in Google Scholar. Dr. Feng has a H-index of 22, and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. She joined Argonne as an Assistant Atmospheric Scientist in 2010, after she did the postdoctoral study at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego.
