Ensemble projections of wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations over the western United States in the mid-21st century.

ABSTRACT: We estimate future wildfire activity over the western United States during the mid-21^st century (2046-2065), based on results from 15 climate models following the A1B scenario. We develop fire prediction models by regressing meteorological variables from the current and previous years together with fire indexes onto observed regional area burned. The regressions explain 0.25-0.60 of the variance in observed annual area burned during 1980-2004, depending on the ecoregion. We also parameterize daily area burned with temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity. This approach explains ~0.5 of the variance in observed area burned over forest ecoregions but shows no predictive capability in the semi-arid regions of Nevada and California. By applying the meteorological fields fro

SUBMITTER: Yue X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3763857 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature