Publication Date
2-1-2025
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Environmental Research Letters
Volume
20
Issue
2
DOI
10.1088/1748-9326/adab86
Abstract
Increasing fuel aridity due to climate warming has and will continue to increase wildfire danger in California. In addition to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, one of the primary proposals for counteracting this increase in wildfire danger is a widespread expansion of hazardous fuel reductions. Here, we quantify the potential for fuel reduction to reduce wildfire intensity using empirical relationships derived from historical observations with a novel combination of spatiotemporal resolution (0.375 km, instantaneous) and extent (48 million acres, 9 years). We use machine learning to quantify relationships between sixteen environmental conditions (including ten fuel characteristics and four temperature-affected aridity characteristics) and satellite-observed fire radiative power. We use the derived relationships to create fire intensity potential (FIP) maps for sixty historical weather snapshots at a 2 km and hourly resolution. We then place these weather snapshots in differing background climatological temperature and fuel characteristic conditions to quantify their independent and combined influence on FIP. We find that in order to offset the effect of climate warming under the SSP2-4.5 emissions scenario, fuel reduction would need to be maintained perpetually on ∼3 million acres (or 600 000 acres per year, 1% of our domain, at a 5 year return frequency) by 2050 and ∼8 million acres (or 1.6 million acres per year, 3% of our domain, at a 5 year return frequency) by 2090. Overall, we find substantial potential for fuel reduction to negate the effects of climate warming on FIP.
Keywords
climate change, climate modeling, fuel aridity, hazardous fuels reductions, mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, wildfire intensity
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Meteorology and Climate Science
Recommended Citation
Patrick T. Brown, Scott J. Strenfel, Richard B. Bagley, and Craig B. Clements. "The potential for fuel reduction to reduce wildfire intensity in a warming California" Environmental Research Letters (2025). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/adab86
