No Cover Image

Journal article 16 views

Global rise in forest fire emissions linked to climate change in the extratropics

Matthew W Jones Orcid Logo, Sander Veraverbeke Orcid Logo, Niels Andela Orcid Logo, Stefan Doerr Orcid Logo, Crystal Kolden Orcid Logo, Guilherme Mataveli Orcid Logo, M Lucrecia Pettinari Orcid Logo, Corinne Le Quéré Orcid Logo, Thais M Rosan Orcid Logo, Guido R van der Werf Orcid Logo, Dave van Wees Orcid Logo, John T Abatzoglou Orcid Logo

Science, Volume: 386, Issue: 6719, Start page: eadl5889

Swansea University Author: Stefan Doerr Orcid Logo

Full text not available from this repository: check for access using links below.

Abstract

Climate change increases fire-favorable weather in forests, but fire trends are also affected by multiple other controlling factors that are difficult to untangle. We use machine learning to systematically group forest ecoregions into 12 global forest pyromes, with each showing distinct sensitivitie...

Full description

Published in: Science
ISSN: 0036-8075 1095-9203
Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2024
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68121
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Abstract: Climate change increases fire-favorable weather in forests, but fire trends are also affected by multiple other controlling factors that are difficult to untangle. We use machine learning to systematically group forest ecoregions into 12 global forest pyromes, with each showing distinct sensitivities to climatic, human, and vegetation controls. This delineation revealed that rapidly increasing forest fire emissions in extratropical pyromes, linked to climate change, offset declining emissions in tropical pyromes during 2001 to 2023. Annual emissions tripled in one extratropical pyrome due to increases in fire-favorable weather, compounded by increased forest cover and productivity. This contributed to a 60% increase in forest fire carbon emissions from forest ecoregions globally. Our results highlight the increasing vulnerability of forests and their carbon stocks to fire disturbance under climate change.
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Funders: This work was funded by the following: UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/V01417X/1 (M.W.J.); European Commission (E.C.) Horizon 2020 (H2020) project VERIFY grant 776810 (M.W.J.); São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grants 2019/25701-8, 2020/15230-5 and 2023/03206-0 (G.M.); EC H2020 project FirEURisk grant no. 101003890 (S.H.D., M.L.P.); NERC project UK-FDRS grant NE/T003553/1 (S.H.D.); European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) FireCCI project contract no. 4000126706/19/I-NB (MLP); Royal Society grant RP\R1\191063 (C.L.Q.); National Science Foundation grant OAI-2019762 (JTA).
Issue: 6719
Start Page: eadl5889