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Climate strongly influences global wildfire activity, and recent wildfire surges may signal fire weather-induced pyrogeographic shifts. Here we use three daily global climate data sets and three fire danger indices to develop a simple annual metric of fire weather season length, and map spatio-temporal trends from 1979 to 2013. We show that fire weather seasons have lengthened across 29.6 million km² (25.3%) of the Earth’s vegetated surface, resulting in an 18.7% increase in global mean fire weather season length. We also show a doubling (108.1% increase) of global burnable area affected by long fire weather seasons (>1.0 σ above the historical mean) and an increased global frequency of long fire weather seasons across 62.4 million km² (53.4%) during the second half of the study period. If these fire weather changes are coupled with ignition sources and available fuel, they could markedly impact global ecosystems, societies, economies and climate.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	fire danger, climate
Research Division:	Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciences
Research Group:	Forestry sciences
Research Field:	Forestry fire management
Objective Division:	Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards
Objective Group:	Understanding climate change
Objective Field:	Effects of climate change on Australia (excl. social impacts)
UTAS Author:	Williamson, GJ (Dr Grant Williamson)
UTAS Author:	Bowman, DMJS (Professor David Bowman)
ID Code:	101879
Year Published:	2015
Web of Science® Times Cited:	910
Deposited By:	Plant Science
Deposited On:	2015-07-15
Last Modified:	2017-11-09
Downloads:	373 View Download Statistics