How much global burned area can be forecast on seasonal time scales using sea surface temperatures?
- Resource Type
- article
- Authors
- Yang Chen; Douglas C Morton; Niels Andela; Louis Giglio; James T Randerson
- Source
- Environmental Research Letters, Vol 11, Iss 4, p 045001 (2016)
- Subject
- biomass burning
teleconnection
seasonal outlook
mitigation
Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
TD1-1066
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Science
Physics
QC1-999
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 1748-9326
Large-scale sea surface temperature (SST) patterns influence the interannual variability of burned area in many regions by means of climate controls on fuel continuity, amount, and moisture content. Some of the variability in burned area is predictable on seasonal timescales because fuel characteristics respond to the cumulative effects of climate prior to the onset of the fire season. Here we systematically evaluated the degree to which annual burned area from the Global Fire Emissions Database version 4 with small fires (GFED4s) can be predicted using SSTs from 14 different ocean regions. We found that about 48% of global burned area can be forecast with a correlation coefficient that is significant at a p