Science Source
David M. J. S. Bowman, Grant J. Williamson, John T. Abatzoglou, Crystal A. Kolden, Mark A. Cochrane, Alistair M. S. Smith
Nature Ecology & Evolution
Published date February 6, 2017

Human exposure and sensitivity to globally extreme wildfire events

  • Identifies 478 extreme wildfire events defined as the daily clusters of fire radiative power from MODIS between 2002 and 2013
  • States that these events are globally distributed across all flammable biomes, and are strongly associated with extreme fire weather conditions
  • States that extreme wildfire events reported as being economically or socially disastrous (n = 144) were concentrated in suburban areas in flammable-forested biomes of the western United States and southeastern Australia, noting potential biases in reporting and the absence of globally comprehensive data of fire disasters
  • Climate change projections suggest an increase in days conducive to extreme wildfire events by 20 to 50% in these disaster-prone landscapes, with sharper increases in the subtropical Southern Hemisphere and European Mediterranean Basin

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