Global rise in forest fire emissions linked to climate change in the extratropics

Matthew W. Jones, Sander Veraverbeke, Niels Andela, Stefan H. Doerr, Crystal Kolden, Guilherme Mataveli, M. Lucrecia Pettinari, Corinne Le Quéré, Thais M. Rosan, Guido R. van der Werf, Dave van Wees, John T. Abatzoglou

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Climate change increases fire-favorable weather in forests, but fire trends are also affected by multiple other controlling factors that are difficult to untangle. We use machine learning to systematically group forest ecoregions into 12 global forest pyromes, with each showing distinct sensitivities to climatic, human, and vegetation controls. This delineation revealed that rapidly increasing forest fire emissions in extratropical pyromes, linked to climate change, offset declining emissions in tropical pyromes during 2001 to 2023. Annual emissions tripled in one extratropical pyrome due to increases in fire-favorable weather, compounded by increased forest cover and productivity. This contributed to a 60% increase in forest fire carbon emissions from forest ecoregions globally. Our results highlight the increasing vulnerability of forests and their carbon stocks to fire disturbance under climate change.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbereadl5889
Pages (from-to)1-12
Number of pages13
JournalScience (New York, N.Y.)
Volume386
Issue number6719
Early online date18 Oct 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2024

Funding

The authors thank H. Smith (UEA) for his guidance on the commitment periods of forestry-related CDR. The authors thank the TRopical Ecosystems and Environmental Sciences (TREES) lab at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) for their feedback on the inclusion of predictor variables relevant to tropical forest ecoregions. This work was funded by the following: UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/ V01417X/1 (M.W.J.); European Commission (E.C.) Horizon 2020 (H2020) project VERIFY grant 776810 (M.W.J.); S\u00E3o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grants 2019/25701-8, 2020/15230-5 and 2023/03206-0 (G.M.); EC H2020 project FirEURisk grant no. 101003890 (S.H.D., M.L.P.); NERC project UK-FDRS grant NE/ T003553/1 (S.H.D.); European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) FireCCI project contract no. 4000126706/ 19/I-NB (MLP); Royal Society grant RP\\R1\\191063 (C.L.Q.); National Science Foundation grant OAI-2019762 (JTA). Author The authors thank H. Smith (UEA) for his guidance on the commitment periods of forestry-related CDR. The authors thank the TRopical Ecosystems and Environmental Sciences (TREES) lab at the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) for their feedback on the inclusion of predictor variables relevant to tropical forest ecoregions. Funding: This work was funded by the following: UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/ V01417X/1 (M.W.J.); European Commission (E.C.) Horizon 2020 (H2020) project VERIFY grant 776810 (M.W.J.); S\u00E3o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grants 2019/25701-8, 2020/15230-5 and 2023/03206-0 (G.M.); EC H2020 project FirEURisk grant no. 101003890 (S.H.D., M.L.P.); NERC project UK-FDRS grant NE/ T003553/1 (S.H.D.); European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) FireCCI project contract no. 4000126706/ 19/I-NB (MLP); Royal Society grant RP\\R1\\191063 (C.L.Q.); National Science Foundation grant OAI-2019762 (JTA). Author contributions: Conceptualization: M.W.J. Methodology: M.W.J., S.V., J.T.A. Resources/Software: N.A., M.L.P., T.R., D.v.W., G.R.v.d.W. Investigation/Formal analysis: M.J.W. Visualization: M.W.J., J.T.A. Writing\u2014original draft: M.W.J. Writing\u2014review and editing: All coauthors. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: Pyromes are provided in three geospatial formats at Zenodo (131); shapefiles; 0.25\u00B0 grids; and 0.05\u00B0 grids. Gridded correlations for all variables are also available at Zenodo (131). The R code used for clustering forest ecoregions into pyromes is also archived at Zenodo (131). The raw data representing burned area, carbon emissions, and all predictor variables in our analysis are publicly available (49, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67\u201370, 132), except for the lightning flash data from the WWLLN (63), which are subject to a commercial agreement but can be provided in a gridded and coarsened form upon request. License information: Copyright \u00A9 2024 the authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original US government works. https://www.science.org/content/page/science-licenses-journal-article-reuse

FundersFunder number
European Space Agency
European Commission
TRopical Ecosystems and Environmental Sciences
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo2020/15230-5, 2023/03206-0, 2019/25701-8
Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
Horizon 2020 Framework ProgrammeNE/ T003553/1, 101003890
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme
Horizon 2020776810
Horizon 2020
National Science FoundationOAI-2019762
National Science Foundation
Climate Change Initiative4000126706/ 19/I-NB
Natural Environment Research CouncilNE/ V01417X/1
Natural Environment Research Council
Royal SocietyRP\R1\191063
Royal Society

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