Future impacts of climate change on forest fire danger in northeastern China

Abstract

Climate warming has a rapid and far-reaching impact on forest fire management in the boreal forests of China. Regional climate model outputs and the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System were used to analyze changes to fire danger and the fire season for future periods under IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) A2 and B2, and the data will guide future fire management planning. We used regional climate in China (1961–1990) as our validation data, and the period (1991–2100) was modeled under SRES A2 and B2 through the weather simulated by the regional climate model system (PRECIS). Meteorological data and fire danger were interpolated to 1 km2 by using ANUSPLIN software. The average FWI value for future spring fire seasons under Scenarios A2 and B2 shows an increase over most of the region. Compared with the baseline, FWI averages of spring fire season will increase by −0.40, 0.26 and 1.32 under Scenario A2, and increase by 0.60, 1.54 and 2.56 under Scenario B2 in 2020s, 2050s and 2080s, respectively. FWI averages of autumn fire season also show an increase over most of the region. FWI values increase more for Scenario B2 than for Scenario A2 in the same periods, particularly during the 2050s and 2080s. Average future FWI values will increase under both scenarios for autumn fire season. The potential burned areas are expected to increase by 10% and 18% in spring for 2080s under Scenario A2 and B2, respectively. Fire season will be prolonged by 21 and 26 days under Scenarios A2 and B2 in 2080s respectively.