Chantelle Burton

Met Office · Hadley Centre

Wildfires affect human health by emitting hazardous air pollutants. The contribution of climate change to global fire-induced health impacts has not been quantified so far. Here, we used three fire-vegetation models in combination with a chemical transport model and health risk assessment framework to attribute global human mortality from fire fine...

Global studies of climate change impacts that use future climate model projections also require projections of land surface changes. Simulated land surface performance in Earth system models is often affected by the atmospheric models' climate biases, leading to errors in land surface projections. Here we run the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator...

Fires are now raging longer and more intensely in many regions worldwide. However, non-linear interactions between fire weather, fuel, land use, management, and ignitions so far impeded formal attribution of global burned area changes. Here we show that climate change is increasingly explaining regional burned area patterns, using an ensemble of gl...

Brazil contains some of the most fire-prone regions in the world, and this motivates the development of a fire probability forecast system. CEMADEN has collaborations with the states of Acre (AC), Goiás (GO), Maranhão (MA) and Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), which use the CEMADEN fire probability forecast data to guide prevention and mitigation actions. I...

This paper describes the rationale and the protocol of the first component of the third simulation round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a, 70 www.isimip.org) and the associated set of climate-related and direct human forcing data (CRF and DHF, respectively). The observation-based climate-related forcings for the...

Widespread changes in the intensity and frequency of fires across the globe are altering the terrestrial carbon (C) sink 1–4 . Although the changes in ecosystem C have been reasonably well quantified for plant biomass pools 5–7 , an understanding of the determinants of fire-driven changes in soil organic C (SOC) across broad environmental gradients...

Land management and deforestation in tropical regions cause wildfires and forest degradation, leading to a loss of ecosystem services and global climate regulation. The objective of the study was to provide a comprehensive assessment of the spatial extent and patterns of burned areas in a new deforestation frontier in the Amazonas state. The method...

Performance and unaccounted uncertainties of fire models make it challenging to determine causes of shifts in past and future fire regimes and attribute fire event drivers. We develop a new, probabilistic style of fire modelling to optimise model performance against satellite observations of wildfires, vegetation cover and meteorological conditions...

Global studies of climate change impacts that use future climate model projections also require projections of land surface changes. Simulated land surface performance in Earth System models is often affected by the atmospheric models’ climate biases, leading to errors in land surface projections. Here we run the JULES-ES land surface model with IS...

Recent wildfire outbreaks around the world have prompted concern that climate change is increasing fire incidence, threatening human livelihood and biodiversity, and perpetuating climate change. Here, we review current understanding of the impacts of climate change on fire weather (weather conditions conducive to the ignition and spread of wildfire...

We show likely substantial increases in burning by 2100 in Boreal and Tropical Forests irrespective of future emissions and after accounting for the (often considerable) uncertainties and biases in global fire and climate modelling. Rather than projecting future fire regimes directly, we used the ConFire Bayesian framework to model the likelihood o...

Timely spatially explicit warning of areas with high fire occurrence probability is an important component of strategic plans to prevent and monitor fires within South American (SA) Protected Areas (PAs). In this study, we present a five-level alert system, which combines both climatological and anthropogenic factors, the two main drivers of fires...

Unprecedented fire events in recent years are leading to a demand for improved understanding of how climate change is already affecting fires, and how this could change in the future. Increased fire activity in South America is one of the most concerning of all the recent events, given the potential impacts on local ecosystems and the global climat...

The sudden increase in Amazon fires early in the 2019 fire season made global headlines. While it has been heavily speculated that the fires were caused by deliberate human ignitions or human-induced landscape changes, there have also been suggestions that meteorological conditions could have played a role. Here, we ask two questions: were the 2019...

Os incêndios florestais e queimadas na América do Sul atingiram máximos de ocorrências entre fevereiro e junho, e também entre agosto e outubro de 2020, com esses oito meses sendo os valores mais altos já registrados desde 2011. Durante março, abril e maio de 2020, respectivamente, os focos de queimadas foram 21%, 49% e 10% maiores do que os picos...

This report identifies priority areas with a high probability of fire threat, in order to support decision making and planning strategies to mitigate the risk and impact of fires. The focus is on South American protected areas, Brazilian settlements and rural private properties in the Brazilian Amazon. These areas have an institutional structure or...

Este informe identifica las áreas prioritarias que presentan una alta probabilidad de amenaza de incendio, con el fin de apoyar la toma de decisiones y la planificación de estrategias para mitigar el riesgo y el impacto de los incendios. La atención se ha centrado en las zonas protegidas de América del Sur, los asentamientos brasileños y las propie...

Observational studies of atmospheric CO2, land ecosystems, and ocean processes show that variability in the carbon cycle is closely related with ENSO. Years with a warm anomaly in the tropical Pacific show a faster CO2 rise due to weaker land carbon sinks, particularly in the tropics, with a partial offset by stronger net uptake by oceans. The oppo...

This Technical Note, produced in English, Portuguese and Spanish, identifies priority areas for reducing the likelihood of burning and forest fires in South America between August and October 2020. In South America, we identified 117 Protected Areas (PA) in a situation of High Alert and Alert. In total, there are more than 287,000 km2 and 146,000 k...

El Niño years are characterized by a high sea surface temperature anomaly in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, which leads to unusually warm and dry conditions over many fire-prone regions globally. This can lead to an increase in burned area and emissions from fire activity, and socio-economic, and environmental losses. Previous studies using satellit...

In this study, we use simulations from seven global vegetation models to provide the first multi‐model estimate of fire impacts on global tree cover and the carbon cycle under current climate and anthropogenic land use conditions, averaged for the years 2001‐2012. Fire reduces the tree covered area and vegetation carbon storage by 10%. Regionally t...

The sudden increase in Amazon fires early in the 2019 fire season made global headlines. While it has been heavily speculated that the fires were caused by deliberate human ignitions or human-induced landscape changes, there have also been suggestions that meteorological conditions could have played a role. Here, we ask two questions: were the 2019...

A series of fire events have captured the attention of the public and press in the last couple of years. South America, for example, saw the largest increase in fire count in nearly 10 years, mainly in areas historically associated with deforestation in Amazonia. Meanwhile, South Eastern Australia has seen a number of devastating bush fires in rece...

We investigate the skill of the GloSea5 seasonal forecasting system for two carbon cycle processes, which are strong contributors to global CO 2 variability: the impact of meteorological conditions on CO 2 uptake by vegetation (characterised by net primary productivity, NPP), and on fire occurrences (characterised by fire risk indices). Current sea...

Seasonal forecasts of global CO₂ concentrations rely on the well-documented relationship with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), combined with estimated anthropogenic emissions. Here, we investigate the skill of the GloSea5 seasonal forecasting system for two carbon cycle processes that underlie the global CO₂–ENSO relationship: the impact of...

Anthropogenically driven declines in tropical savannah burnt area1,2 have recently received attention due to their effect on trends in global burnt area3,4. Large-scale trends in ecosystems where vegetation has adapted to infrequent fire, especially in cooler and wetter forested areas, are less well understood. Here, small changes in fire regimes c...

Disturbance of vegetation is a critical component of land cover, but is generally poorly constrained in land surface and carbon cycle models. In particular, land-use change and fire can be treated as large-scale disturbances without full representation of their underlying complexities and interactions. Here we describe developments to the land surf...

This paper shows recent progress in our understanding of climate variability and trends in the Amazon region, and how these interact with land use change. The review includes an overview of up-to-date information on climate and hydrological variability, and on warming trends in Amazonia, which reached 0.6–0.7°C over the last 40 years, with 2016 as...

The terrestrial biosphere shows substantial inertia in its response to environmental change. Hence, assessments of transient changes in ecosystem properties to 2100 do not capture the full magnitude of the response realized once ecosystems reach an effective equilibrium with the changed environmental boundary conditions. This equilibrium state can...

The representation of disturbance is a critical factor in land-surface modelling, but is generally poorly constrained in carbon cycle models. In particular, land-use change and fire can be treated as large-scale disturbances without full representation of their underlying complexities and interactions. Here we describe developments to the land surf...

The commitment to limit warming to 1.5 °C as set out in the Paris Agreement is widely regarded as ambitious and challenging. It has been proposed that reaching this target may require a number of actions, which could include some form of carbon removal or Solar Radiation Management in addition to strong emission reductions. Here we assess one theor...

Global fire models typically describe fire as a consequence of fuel load, moisture, natural and anthropogenic ignitions, and land use suppression. A lack of information on the temporal and spatial distribution of these controls has meant that their simulated effects on predicting burnt area are largely untested. Despite this, there is a pervasive a...

Idealized climate change simulations with a new physical climate model, HadGEM3-GC2 from The Met Office Hadley Centre are presented and contrasted with the earlier MOHC model, HadGEM2-ES. The role of atmospheric resolution is also investigated. The Transient Climate Response (TCR) is 1.9 K/2.1 K at N216/N96 and Effective Climate Sensitivity (ECS) i...