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Title: The status and challenge of global fire modelling

Journal Article · · Biogeosciences (Online)
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12];  [13];  [14];  [15];  [16];  [15];  [17] more »;  [18];  [19];  [20];  [12];  [21];  [22];  [18];  [10] « less
  1. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany)
  2. Univ. of Reading, Reading (United Kingdom); Macquarie Univ., North Ryde, NSW (Australia)
  3. Macquarie Univ., North Ryde, NSW (Australia); Imperial College, Ascot (United Kingdom)
  4. Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ (United States)
  5. Univ. of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (South Africa); Natural Resources and the Environment, Pretoria (South Africa)
  6. Univ. Paul-Valery, Montpellier Cedex (France)
  7. Univ. of Leeds, Leeds (United Kingdom)
  8. Univ. of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo (Brazil)
  9. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States); Conservation Biology Institute, Corvallis, OR (United States)
  10. Univ. Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  11. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Institute (BiK-F), Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
  12. Univ. of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  13. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Institute (BiK-F), Frankfurt am Main (Germany); Goethe Univ., Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
  14. Univ. of Lausanne, Lausanne (Switzerland)
  15. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
  16. Lund Univ., Lund (Sweden)
  17. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
  18. Imperial College, London (United Kingdom)
  19. Environment Canada, Victoria, BC (Canada)
  20. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen (Germany)
  21. Open Univ., Milton Keynes (United Kingdom); Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz (Germany)
  22. VU Univ. Amsterdam, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Biomass burning impacts vegetation dynamics, biogeochemical cycling, atmospheric chemistry, and climate, with sometimes deleterious socio-economic impacts. Under future climate projections it is often expected that the risk of wildfires will increase. Our ability to predict the magnitude and geographic pattern of future fire impacts rests on our ability to model fire regimes, using either well-founded empirical relationships or process-based models with good predictive skill. While a large variety of models exist today, it is still unclear which type of model or degree of complexity is required to model fire adequately at regional to global scales. This is the central question underpinning the creation of the Fire Model Intercomparison Project (FireMIP), an international initiative to compare and evaluate existing global fire models against benchmark data sets for present-day and historical conditions. In this paper we review how fires have been represented in fire-enabled dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) and give an overview of the current state of the art in fire-regime modelling. In conclusion, we indicate which challenges still remain in global fire modelling and stress the need for a comprehensive model evaluation and outline what lessons may be learned from FireMIP.

Research Organization:
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany). Institute of Meteorology and Climate research, Atmospheric Environmental Research
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
603445; 603542
OSTI ID:
1375423
Journal Information:
Biogeosciences (Online), Vol. 13, Issue 11; ISSN 1726-4189
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 220 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (74)

Will Fire Danger Be Reduced by Using Solar Radiation Management to Limit Global Warming to 1.5 °C Compared to 2.0 °C? journal April 2018
Influence of Fire on the Carbon Cycle and Climate journal April 2019
Will Landscape Fire Increase in the Future? A Systems Approach to Climate, Fire, Fuel, and Human Drivers journal February 2019
Inverse Determination of the Influence of Fire on Vegetation Carbon Turnover in the Pantropics journal December 2018
Historical carbon dioxide emissions caused by land-use changes are possibly larger than assumed journal January 2017
Reassessment of pre-industrial fire emissions strongly affects anthropogenic aerosol forcing journal August 2018
Biophysical feedback of global forest fires on surface temperature journal January 2019
Global fire emissions buffered by the production of pyrogenic carbon journal August 2019
Ozone–climate interactions and effects on solar ultraviolet radiation journal January 2019
Impact of fire on global land surface air temperature and energy budget for the 20th century due to changes within ecosystems journal April 2017
Biological and geophysical feedbacks with fire in the Earth system journal March 2018
Recent global and regional trends in burned area and their compensating environmental controls journal June 2019
Competing consumers: contrasting the patterns and impacts of fire and mammalian herbivory in Africa journal September 2016
Vegetation demographics in Earth System Models: A review of progress and priorities journal October 2017
Simulating the recent impacts of multiple biotic disturbances on forest carbon cycling across the United States journal December 2017
Resilience of tropical tree cover: The roles of climate, fire, and herbivory journal August 2018
Characterising the biophysical, economic and social impacts of soil carbon sequestration as a greenhouse gas removal technology journal October 2019
Tree cover shows strong sensitivity to precipitation variability across the global tropics journal January 2018
Climate seasonality as an essential predictor of global fire activity journal November 2018
Thresholds of fire response to moisture and fuel load differ between tropical savannas and grasslands across continents journal November 2019
A human-driven decline in global burned area journal June 2017
Climate, ecosystems, and planetary futures: The challenge to predict life in Earth system models journal February 2018
Fire, CO2, and climate effects on modeled vegetation and carbon dynamics in western Oregon and Washington journal January 2019
A Revised Historical Fire Regime Analysis in Tunisia (1985–2010) from a Critical Analysis of the National Fire Database and Remote Sensing journal January 2018
Recognizing Women Leaders in Fire Science journal August 2018
Developing a Random Forest Algorithm for MODIS Global Burned Area Classification journal November 2017
Evaluation of climate model aerosol seasonal and spatial variability over Africa using AERONET journal January 2017
Historical (1700–2012) global multi-model estimates of the fire emissions from the Fire Modeling Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) journal January 2019
The pyrogeography of eastern boreal Canada from 1901 to 2012 simulated with the LPJ-LMfire model journal January 2018
Tropical climate–vegetation–fire relationships: multivariate evaluation of the land surface model JSBACH journal January 2018
Varying relationships between fire radiative power and fire size at a global scale journal January 2019
Theoretical uncertainties for global satellite-derived burned area estimates journal January 2019
Response of simulated burned area to historical changes in environmental and anthropogenic factors: a comparison of seven fire models journal January 2019
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The Fire Modeling Intercomparison Project (FireMIP), phase 1: experimental and analytical protocols with detailed model descriptions journal January 2017
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Interactive impacts of fire and vegetation dynamics on global carbon and water budget using Community Land Model version 4.5 journal January 2019
Improving the LPJmL4-SPITFIRE vegetation–fire model for South America using satellite data journal January 2019
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Global relationship of fire occurrence and fire intensity: A test of intermediate fire occurrence-intensity hypothesis: FIRE OCCURRENCE-INTENSITY RELATIONSHIP journal May 2017
Climate Change Penalty to Ozone Air Quality: Review of Current Understandings and Knowledge Gaps journal June 2019
Lightning as a major driver of recent large fire years in North American boreal forests journal June 2017
Deep learning and process understanding for data-driven Earth system science journal February 2019
Uncertainty Quantification of Extratropical Forest Biomass in CMIP5 Models over the Northern Hemisphere journal July 2018
FRY, a global database of fire patch functional traits derived from space-borne burned area products journal July 2018
Global patterns of interannual climate-fire relationships journal August 2018
Drivers and mechanisms of tree mortality in moist tropical forests journal February 2018
Mapping future fire probability under climate change: Does vegetation matter? journal August 2018
Post-Fire Carbon Dynamics in Subalpine Forests of the Rocky Mountains journal December 2019
Global Detection of Long-Term (1982–2017) Burned Area with AVHRR-LTDR Data journal September 2019
Implementing microscopic charcoal particles into a global aerosol–climate model journal January 2018
Using CESM-RESFire to understand climate–fire–ecosystem interactions and the implications for decadal climate variability journal January 2020
The pyrogeography of eastern boreal Canada from 1901 to 2012 simulated with the LPJ-LMfire model journal September 2017
Historic global biomass burning emissions for CMIP6 (BB4CMIP) based on merging satellite observations with proxies and fire models (1750–2015) journal January 2017
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A fire model with distinct crop, pasture, and non-agricultural burning: Use of new data and a model-fitting algorithm for FINAL.1 text January 2018
Tropical climate–vegetation–fire relationships: multivariate evaluation of the land surface model JSBACH text January 2018
Emergent relationships with respect to burned area in global satellite observations and fire-enabled vegetation models text January 2019
How contemporary bioclimatic and human controls change global fire regimes journal August 2019
Dominant regions and drivers of the variability of the global land carbon sink across timescales journal May 2018
Fixing a snag in carbon emissions estimates from wildfires journal July 2019
Are litter decomposition and fire linked through plant species traits? journal September 2017
Increased aridity drives post‐fire recovery of Mediterranean forests towards open shrublands text January 2020
Historic global biomass burning emissions for CMIP6 (BB4CMIP) based on merging satellite observations with proxies and fire models (1750-2015) text January 2017
Substantial large-scale feedbacks between natural aerosols and climate journal December 2017
Reducing uncertainty in projections of terrestrial carbon uptake journal April 2017
Tropical climate-vegetation-fire relationships: multivariate evaluation of the land surface model JSBACH posted_content January 2018
The Fire Modeling Intercomparison Project (FireMIP), phase 1: Experimental and analytical protocols with detailed model descriptions text January 2017
Emergent relationships with respect to burned area in global satellite observations and fire-enabled vegetation models journal January 2019
Response of simulated burned area to historical changes in environmental and anthropogenic factors: a comparison of seven fire models text January 2019
Historical (1700–2012) global multi-model estimates of the fire emissions from the Fire Modeling Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) text January 2019
Implementing microscopic charcoal particles into a global aerosol-climate model text January 2018
Theoretical uncertainties for global satellite-derived burned area estimates journal April 2019

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