Adaptation of Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index system and it's application

Abstract

Fire is one of the dominant disturbances in China's forest. Forest fires are strongly influenced by weather and climate. Recently, the climate has been warming as a result of an increasing concentration of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the global atmosphere composition. China's temperature rise has kept the same pace with global warming. Such warming is likely to have a significant impact on forest fires. This study is based in northeastern China, an area projected to become hotter and drier under climate change. Aiming at the occurrence regularities of forest fires in Jilin Province, a new fire danger classification method was developed by means of the statistical data on forest fires and meteorological data collected from 1996 to 2008 according to the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index system (CFFWIS). With daily temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind speed as input, the CFFWIS is used to quantitatively measure fire risk for the study region. The parameter emendation and test results indicate that the output index values from Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System (CFFWIS) are well correlated with the actual fire occurrence. It is also verified that the classification of fire danger ratings can better describe the fire danger ratings in Jilin Province, and the FWI system is suitable for the local fire weather.