Extratropical forests increasingly at risk due to lightning fires

Thomas A. J. Janssen; Matthew W. Jones; Declan Finney; Guido R. van der Werf; Dave van Wees; Wenxuan Xu; Sander Veraverbeke

doi:10.1038/s41561-023-01322-z

Extratropical forests increasingly at risk due to lightning fires

Thomas A. J. Janssen, Matthew W. Jones, Declan Finney, Guido R. van der Werf, Dave van Wees, Wenxuan Xu, Sander Veraverbeke

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Fires can be ignited by people or by natural causes, which are almost exclusively lightning strikes. Discriminating between lightning and anthropogenic fires is paramount when estimating impacts of changing socioeconomic and climatological conditions on fire activity. Here we use reference data of fire ignition locations, cause and burned area from seven world regions in a machine-learning approach to obtain a global attribution of lightning and anthropogenic ignitions as dominant fire ignition sources. We show that 77% (uncertainty expressed as one standard deviation = 8%) of the burned area in extratropical intact forests currently stems from lightning and that these areas will probably experience 11 to 31% more lightning per degree warming. Extratropical forests are of global importance for carbon storage. They currently experience high fire-related forest losses and have, per unit area, among the largest fire emissions on Earth. Future increases in lightning in intact forest may therefore compound the positive feedback loop between climate change and extratropical wildfires.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1136-1144
Number of pages	9
Journal	Nature Geoscience
Volume	16
Issue number	12
Early online date	9 Nov 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01322-z
Publication status	Published - Dec 2023

Funding

We thank J. M. Moreira of the Instituto da Conservação da Natureza for providing fire-cause reference data for Portugal and S. Harris of the Country Fire Authority for providing fire-cause reference data for Victoria, Australia. We thank the Dutch Research Council for funding support through a Vidi grant 016.Vidi.189.070 (S.V.) and Vici grant 0.16.160.324 (G.v.d.W.). We thank the European Research Council for funding support through Consolidator grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101000987) (S.V.). We thank the Natural Environment Research Council for funding support through NE/K500835/1 grant (D.F.). We thank the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for funding support through grant NE/V01417X/1 (M.J.W). We thank J. M. Moreira of the Instituto da Conservação da Natureza for providing fire-cause reference data for Portugal and S. Harris of the Country Fire Authority for providing fire-cause reference data for Victoria, Australia. We thank the Dutch Research Council for funding support through a Vidi grant 016.Vidi.189.070 (S.V.) and Vici grant 0.16.160.324 (G.v.d.W.). We thank the European Research Council for funding support through Consolidator grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 101000987) (S.V.). We thank the Natural Environment Research Council for funding support through NE/K500835/1 grant (D.F.). We thank the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for funding support through grant NE/V01417X/1 (M.J.W).

Funders	Funder number
Instituto da Conservação da Natureza
European Research Council
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek	016, 016.160.324
Natural Environment Research Council	NE/K500835/1, NE/V01417X/1
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme	101000987

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title = "Extratropical forests increasingly at risk due to lightning fires",

abstract = "Fires can be ignited by people or by natural causes, which are almost exclusively lightning strikes. Discriminating between lightning and anthropogenic fires is paramount when estimating impacts of changing socioeconomic and climatological conditions on fire activity. Here we use reference data of fire ignition locations, cause and burned area from seven world regions in a machine-learning approach to obtain a global attribution of lightning and anthropogenic ignitions as dominant fire ignition sources. We show that 77\% (uncertainty expressed as one standard deviation = 8\%) of the burned area in extratropical intact forests currently stems from lightning and that these areas will probably experience 11 to 31\% more lightning per degree warming. Extratropical forests are of global importance for carbon storage. They currently experience high fire-related forest losses and have, per unit area, among the largest fire emissions on Earth. Future increases in lightning in intact forest may therefore compound the positive feedback loop between climate change and extratropical wildfires.",

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AB - Fires can be ignited by people or by natural causes, which are almost exclusively lightning strikes. Discriminating between lightning and anthropogenic fires is paramount when estimating impacts of changing socioeconomic and climatological conditions on fire activity. Here we use reference data of fire ignition locations, cause and burned area from seven world regions in a machine-learning approach to obtain a global attribution of lightning and anthropogenic ignitions as dominant fire ignition sources. We show that 77% (uncertainty expressed as one standard deviation = 8%) of the burned area in extratropical intact forests currently stems from lightning and that these areas will probably experience 11 to 31% more lightning per degree warming. Extratropical forests are of global importance for carbon storage. They currently experience high fire-related forest losses and have, per unit area, among the largest fire emissions on Earth. Future increases in lightning in intact forest may therefore compound the positive feedback loop between climate change and extratropical wildfires.

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Extratropical forests increasingly at risk due to lightning fires

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Extratropical forests increasingly at risk due to lightning fires

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