Projected changes in fire size from daily spread potential in Canada over the 21st century

Abstract

The broad consensus indicates that climate change will cause larger and more frequent fires, resulting in a growing annual area burned (AAB) in much of Canada. Our ability to predict future changes in fire size (FS) and AAB is limited due to the uncertainty embedded in climate change models and our inability to quantify the complex interactions between the changing environment and fire activity. In this study, we introduce a new method to predict future FS and AAB across Canada over the 21st century based on fire-conducive weather and how it translates to on-the-ground fire spread (i.e. spread days). We found that the potential for an extreme fire year (99th percentile of AAB) could quadruple by the end of the century across Canada, and ≥ 10 times more common in the boreal biome. Specifically, FS and AAB may increase 20%–64% and 25%–93%, respectively, and the average fire year under the extreme climate scenario may burn ~11 Mha, which is ~4 Mha higher than the most extreme fire year in Canada’s modern history (~7 Mha). Our results demonstrate that by accounting for the strong nonlinear expansion of wildfires as a function of number of fire spread days, even conservative climate-change scenarios may yield significant increase in fire activity.