Global warming is shifting the relationships between fire weather and realized fire-induced CO2 emissions in Europe
Jofre Carnicer, Andrés Alegría, Christos Giannakopoulos, Francesca Di Giuseppe, Anna Karali, Nikos Koutsias, Piero Lionello, Mark Parrington, Claudia Vitolo
Abstract
Abstract Fire activity has significantly changed in Europe over the last decades (1980–2020s), with the emergence of summers attaining unprecedented fire prone weather conditions. Here we report a significant shift in the non-stationary relationship linking fire weather conditions and fire intensity measured in terms of CO 2 emissions released during biomass burning across a latitudinal gradient of European IPCC regions. The reported trends indicate that global warming is possibly inducing an incipient change on regional fire dynamics towards increased fire impacts in Europe, suggesting that emerging risks posed by exceptional fire-weather danger conditions may progressively exceed current wildfire suppression capabilities in the next decades and impact forest carbon sinks.