The current climatic trends and meteorological conditions of the fire dangerous situation formation in the Ural-Caspian region

Abstract

Weather-climatic conditions are one of the leading factors forming fire dangerous satiations in the arid and semi-arid regions. Intra-continental position of the Ural-Caspian area promotes to reveal the diversity of climatic conditions and estimate the current trends in terms of the latitudinal-zonal change of landscapes and an increase of gradient of continentality. Results of analysis of the principal weather-climatic conditions – temperature, air precipitation, hydrothermal terms, wind regime, insolation) are summarized in the paper. Also, we identified spatio-temporal peculiarities of their long-time and current dynamics. The received results were analyzed in the aspect of the formation of fire dangerous situations in different landscapes of the examined region. Long-term archives on heat anomalies FIRMS served as principal data on grass fires. We have detected and confirmed that the most significant trends of the regional climate change are: a) growing air temperature occurring everywhere in frost-free seasons of a year; b) the cyclic dynamics of precipitation with the modern trend to aridization; c) annual distribution of rainfall; d) intensification of anomality of principal climatic parameters with the display of contrasting waves of heat and cold. All these tendencies directly (fire dangerous weather situations) or indirectly (productivity and a state of the vegetation cover) form the dynamics of grass fires. Nevertheless, the role of separate meteorological indicators and weather-climatic conditions, on the whole, are not often statistically significant in wildfires’ development. It is conditioned by the more substantial role of an anthropogenic factor that, in its turn, combines stochastic and purposeful agricultural sources of fires’ emergence.