Weather Factors and Fire Danger in the Mediterranean

We recall the main elements of fire weather in the Mediterranean environment and present the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) System as the fire danger rating system currently most widely applied in the Mediterranean Europe. We also pre-sent the results of some calibration studies of the FWI System components carried out in the Mediterranean environment by various authors. Secondly, we look at the distribution of FWI System components values during the 2816 major fires (i.e. fires with final size > 500 ha) recorded in Southern Europe in the last 28 years. Fi-nally we present a regression model we have developed that predicts (R2=0.87) monthly burned area in the European Mediterranean basin from monthly averages of the Initial Spread Index (ISI) and Drought Code (DC) components of FWI, valid for the months May to November.

CAMIA Andrea;  AMATULLI Giuseppe; 

2009-12-11

Springer-Verlag

JRC55075

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC55075,   

10.1007/978-3-642-01754-4,