Influence of global climate modes on wildfire occurrence in the contiguous United States under recent and future climates
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Keeping, Theodore R
Shepherd, Theodore G
Prentice, I Colin
Van der Wiel, Karin
Harrison, Sandy P
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Predictable modes of climate variability, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), have a major influence on regional weather patterns, an important control on wildfire occurrence. Although these global climate modes have been associated with historical variability in wildfire occurrence in the United States and are used to forecast seasonal wildfire risk, precise information about the spatial pattern and magnitude of their influence is lacking and the satellite record of wildfires is too short to address these issues. Here we use wildfire occurrence model with a large ensemble of 1600 simulated years from EC-Earth3 in a recent climate (2000–2009) and a future climate corresponding to + 2 °C global warming, to characterise the impact of specific climate modes on wildfire occurrence in the contiguous US. We show that ENSO, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and the 1-year lagged Tropical North Atlantic (TNA+1) have the greatest effect on annual fire occurrence—strongly contributed by the effect of these modes on hot, dry conditions in the Great Plains and precipitation in the southwestern US. El Niño is not significantly associated with wildfire occurrence in the northwestern US, contrary to expectation, but is associated with a later (earlier) wildfire season peak in the southwestern (southeastern) US. Under future warming, the AMO and PNA become a significant influence over most of the US, and the magnitude of impact of ENSO and TNA+1 increase strongly.
Date Issued
2025-12-19
Date Acceptance
2025-11-23
Citation
Climate Dynamics, 2025, 64
ISSN
0930-7575
Publisher
Springer
Journal / Book Title
Climate Dynamics
Volume
64
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41426346
PII: 7998
Subjects
BURNT AREA
Climate modes
Climate variability
DROUGHT
ENSO
FIRE OCCURRENCE
INTERIOR PACIFIC-NORTHWEST
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
NINO-SOUTHERN-OSCILLATION
Physical Sciences
PRECIPITATION
Science & Technology
SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURE
Teleconnections
TELECONNECTIONS
TROPICAL ATLANTIC
Wildfire
Wildfire modelling
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Germany
Article Number
15
Date Publish Online
2025-12-19