Global Emergence of Anthropogenic Climate Change in Fire Weather Indices

Abstract

AbstractChanges in global fire activity are influenced by a multitude of factors including land‐cover change, policies, and climatic conditions. This study uses 17 climate models to evaluate when changes in fire weather, as realized through the Fire Weather Index, emerge from the expected range of internal variability due to anthropogenic climate change using the time of emergence framework. Anthropogenic increases in extreme Fire Weather Index days emerge for 22% of burnable land area globally by 2019, including much of the Mediterranean and the Amazon. By the midtwenty‐first century, emergence among the different Fire Weather Index metrics occurs for 33–62% of burnable lands. Emergence of heightened fire weather becomes more widespread as a function of global temperature change. At 2 °C above preindustrial levels, the area of emergence is half that for 3 °C. These results highlight increases in fire weather conditions with human‐caused climate change and incentivize local adaptation efforts to limit detrimental fire impacts.