Climate change strongly affects future fire weather danger in Indian forests

Abstract

Changes in temperature, precipitation, wind speed, and relative humidity due to climate change are likely to alter future fire regimes. We quantified the impact of such changes on the fire weather of Indian forests using a fire weather index and high-resolution downscaled climate projections. While conventional wisdom contends that future temperature increases will increase fire weather indices, we find this to be true only in dry forests. In humid forests, the fire weather index will decrease despite the warming due to future increases in precipitation and/or relative humidity. Days with severe fire weather danger will increase by up to 60% in dry forests but will reduce by up to 40% in humid forests. The fire season will be longer by 3–61 days across the country and the pre-monsoon fire season will become more intense over 55% of forests. This study suggests for countries like India with fragmented forests and diverse ecoclimates, standards and mitigation strategies must be developed at regional instead of national level.