Multi-decadal increase of forest burned area in Australia is linked to climate change

Josep G. Canadell (), C. P. (Mick) Meyer, Garry D. Cook, Andrew Dowdy, Peter R. Briggs, Jürgen Knauer, Acacia Pepler and Vanessa Haverd
Additional contact information
Josep G. Canadell: Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
C. P. (Mick) Meyer: Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
Garry D. Cook: CSIRO Land and Water, CSIRO Land and Water, PMB 44
Andrew Dowdy: Bureau of Meteorology, Climate Research Section, Bureau of Meteorology
Peter R. Briggs: Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
Jürgen Knauer: Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
Acacia Pepler: Bureau of Meteorology, Climate Research Section, Bureau of Meteorology
Vanessa Haverd: Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Fire activity in Australia is strongly affected by high inter-annual climate variability and extremes. Through changes in the climate, anthropogenic climate change has the potential to alter fire dynamics. Here we compile satellite (19 and 32 years) and ground-based (90 years) burned area datasets, climate and weather observations, and simulated fuel loads for Australian forests. Burned area in Australia’s forests shows a linear positive annual trend but an exponential increase during autumn and winter. The mean number of years since the last fire has decreased consecutively in each of the past four decades, while the frequency of forest megafire years (>1 Mha burned) has markedly increased since 2000. The increase in forest burned area is consistent with increasingly more dangerous fire weather conditions, increased risk factors associated with pyroconvection, including fire-generated thunderstorms, and increased ignitions from dry lightning, all associated to varying degrees with anthropogenic climate change.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27225-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-27225-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27225-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().