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      The April 2021 Cape Town Wildfire: Has Anthropogenic Climate Change Altered the Likelihood of Extreme Fire Weather?

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          Abstract

          CMIP6 models suggest that extreme fire weather associated with the April 2021 Cape Town wildfire has become 90% more likely in a warmer world.

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          The Community Earth System Model (CESM) Large Ensemble Project: A Community Resource for Studying Climate Change in the Presence of Internal Climate Variability

          J. E. Kay, C Deser, Joshua Phillips … (2015)
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            The collection 6 MODIS active fire detection algorithm and fire products

            Louis Giglio, Wilfrid Schroeder, Christopher Justice (2016)
            The two Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments, on-board NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, have provided more than a decade of global fire data. Here we describe improvements made to the fire detection algorithm and swath-level product that were implemented as part of the Collection 6 land-product reprocessing, which commenced in May 2015. The updated algorithm is intended to address limitations observed with the previous Collection 5 fire product, notably the occurrence of false alarms caused by small forest clearings, and the omission of large fires obscured by thick smoke. Processing was also expanded to oceans and other large water bodies to facilitate monitoring of offshore gas flaring. Additionally, fire radiative power (FRP) is now retrieved using a radiance-based approach, generally decreasing FRP for all but the comparatively small fraction of high intensity fire pixels. We performed a Stage-3 validation of the Collection 5 and Collection 6 Terra MODIS fire products using reference fire maps derived from more than 2500 high-resolution Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) images. Our results indicated targeted improvements in the performance of the Collection 6 active fire detection algorithm compared to Collection 5, with reduced omission errors over large fires, and reduced false alarm rates in tropical ecosystems. Overall, the MOD14 Collection 6 daytime global commission error was 1.2%, compared to 2.4% in Collection 5. Regionally, the probability of detection for Collection 6 exhibited a ~3% absolute increase in Boreal North America and Boreal Asia compared to Collection 5, a ~1% absolute increase in Equatorial Asia and Central Asia, a ~1% absolute decrease in South America above the Equator, and little or no change in the remaining regions considered. Not unexpectedly, the observed variability in the probability of detection was strongly driven by regional differences in fire size. Overall, there was a net improvement in Collection 6 algorithm performance globally.
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              Attribution of the Australian bushfire risk to anthropogenic climate change

              Geert van Oldenborgh, Folmer Krikken, Sophie Lewis … (2021)
              Abstract. Disastrous bushfires during the last months of 2019 and January 2020 affected Australia, raising the question to what extent the risk of these fires was exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. To answer the question for southeastern Australia, where fires were particularly severe, affecting people and ecosystems, we use a physically based index of fire weather, the Fire Weather Index; long-term observations of heat and drought; and 11 large ensembles of state-of-the-art climate models. We find large trends in the Fire Weather Index in the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Atmospheric Reanalysis (ERA5) since 1979 and a smaller but significant increase by at least 30 % in the models. Therefore, we find that climate change has induced a higher weather-induced risk of such an extreme fire season. This trend is mainly driven by the increase of temperature extremes. In agreement with previous analyses we find that heat extremes have become more likely by at least a factor of 2 due to the long-term warming trend. However, current climate models overestimate variability and tend to underestimate the long-term trend in these extremes, so the true change in the likelihood of extreme heat could be larger, suggesting that the attribution of the increased fire weather risk is a conservative estimate. We do not find an attributable trend in either extreme annual drought or the driest month of the fire season, September–February. The observations, however, show a weak drying trend in the annual mean. For the 2019/20 season more than half of the July–December drought was driven by record excursions of the Indian Ocean Dipole and Southern Annular Mode, factors which are included in the analysis here. The study reveals the complexity of the 2019/20 bushfire event, with some but not all drivers showing an imprint of anthropogenic climate change. Finally, the study concludes with a qualitative review of various vulnerability and exposure factors that each play a role, along with the hazard in increasing or decreasing the overall impact of the bushfires.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Title: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
                Publisher: American Meteorological Society
                ISSN (Print): 0003-0007
                ISSN (Electronic): 1520-0477
                Publication date Created: January 2023
                Publication date (Print): January 2023
                Volume: 104
                Issue: 1
                Pages: E298-E304
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom;
                [2 ]Climate System Analysis Group, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa;
                [3 ]Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, and School of Energy, Construction and Environment, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom
                Article
                DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0204.1
                SO-VID: cd535f65-24dd-40ef-8c0e-cdefe6e23290
                Copyright © © 2023
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