Testing drought indicators for summer burned area prediction in Italy

Abstract

During the summer season, the Italian territory is vulnerable to extended wildfires, which can have dramatic impact on human activities and ecosystems. Such wildfire events are usually associated with the presence of drought conditions and are generally more severe in southern Italy, owing to the high temperatures and reduced precipitation that characterize this geographical region. In this work, we discuss the statistical analysis of the burned area (BA) in Italy and build simple data-driven models linking BA to different climatic drivers, comparing the relevance of direct surface soil moisture information to that provided by drought indices such as the Standardized Precipitation Index and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). We show that considering surface soil moisture alone is sufficient to produce reliable out-of-sample predictions in a large part of the country. By contrast, SPEI allows for better model performances in the more arid regions.