Modeling burned area in Europe with the Community Land Model

In this study we present simulations of burned area at European scale for the period 1990{2009 conducted with the Community Land Model (CLM). By using statistics on re counts and mean re suppression time from the European Fire Database werefined the parameterization of the functions describing human ignition/suppression and we modified the description of biomass availability for res. The results obtained with the modified imodel show an improvement of the description of the spatial and interannual variability of the burned area: the model bias is reduced by 45 %, and the explained variance is increased by about 9 % compared to the original parameterization of the model. The observed relationships between burned area, climate (temperature and precipitation) and aboveground biomass are also reproduced more accurately by the modied model. This is particularly relevant for the applicability of the model to simulate future re regimes under different climate conditions. However, results showed an overestimation of the burned area for some European countries (e.g. Spain and France) and an underestimation in years with an extreme re season in Mediterranean countries. Our results highlight the need for refining the parameterization of human ignition/suppression and fuel availability for regional application of re models implemented in land{surface{models.

MIGLIAVACCA Mirco;  DOSIO Alessandro;  KLOSTER Silvia;  WARD D.S.;  CAMIA Andrea;  HOUBORG Rasmus;  DURRANT Tracy;  KHABAROV Nikolay;  KRASOVSKIY A.A.;  SAN-MIGUEL-AYANZ Jesus;  CESCATTI Alessandro; 

2013-04-24

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION

JRC76517

0148-0227,   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC76517,   

10.1002/jgrg.20026,