Seasonal fire danger forecast for the Euro-Mediterranean area

It is well known that climate and its consequent weather patterns, including extremes, are major elements affecting fire ignition and propagation. Then, short-term climate forecasts and the prediction of the prevalent anomalous weather conditions plays a key role in wildland fire management and fighting. Most of the current fire danger prediction systems are based on weather forecast models. In this work, we use Ensemble Seasonal Predictions (ESPs) to obtain the meteorological variables to assess the potential fire danger conditions. The ESPs are obtained from the INGV-CMCC Seasonal Prediction System (SPS) which is based on a State-of-the-Art Atmosphere-Ocean Coupled General Circulation Model. Nine member ensemble forecasts produced from the SPS are used in conjunction with the Integrated Fire Danger Index – IFI, developed by the CMCC, to estimate the potential fire danger in the Euro-Mediterranean area. IFI is an integrated fire danger index that includes four Codes: 1) Drought Code (DC), linked to water status of plants; 2) Meteo Code (MC), related to turbulence and weather conditions; 3) Fuel Code (FC), which takes into account fuel characteristics and moisture; 4) Topological Code (TC), which considers slope and aspect. In addition, some of the most common fire danger indexes (e.g. FWI, MK4, etc) are also used in the analysis. The analysis is conducted for the period 1992-2001. The results are tested for several hot-spot locations. This exercise confirms the ability of the combination of the SPS with the fire danger index, and shows a promising potential use of this tool to estimate fire danger conditions at seasonal scale