Wildfire-Atmosphere Interaction Index for Extreme Fire Behavior

During the last 20 years extreme wildfires have challenged firefighting capabilities. Often, the prediction of the extreme behaviour is essential for the safety of citizens and fire fighters. Currently, there are several fire danger indices routinely used by firefighting services, but they are not suited to forecast convective extreme wildfire behaviour at global scale. This article proposes a new fire danger index, extreme fire behaviour index (EFBI), based on the analysis of the vertical profiles of the atmosphere above wildfires as an alternative to the use of traditional fire danger indices. The EFBI evaluates the ease of interaction between wildfires and the atmosphere that could lead to convective, erratic and extreme wildfires. Results of this research in the analysis of some of the critical fires in the last years show that the EFBI can potentially be used to provide valuable information to identify convective fires and to enhance fire danger rating schemes worldwide.

ARTES VIVANCOS Tomas;  CASTELLNOU Marc;  DURRANT Tracy;  SAN-MIGUEL-AYANZ Jesus; 

2022-02-16

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH

JRC122021

1561-8633 (online),   

https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/22/509/2022/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC122021,   

10.5194/nhess-22-509-2022 (online),