Potential changes in fire probability and severity under climate change scenarios in Mediterranean areas

Complex and non-linear relationships among vegetation, weather patterns, and topography are responsible for wildfire probability and severity at landscape scales. Consequently, the study of potential climate change impacts on wildfire probability can be expected to have additional sources of error and uncertainty respect to the uncertainties in the future climate projections. The aim of this work is to estimate burn probability and fire severity under different weather scenarios, and to assess the future changes in burn probability and severity at Mediterranean area. The climatic data used in this study were generated by the Regional Climate Model (RCM) EBU-POM developed by the Belgrade University in cooperation with the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change (CMCC). The study was realized considering a baseline climate scenario in order to simulate the current Mediterranean climate (1961-1990), and a future climate scenario generated in order to produce a simulated climate for the period 2071-2100. The experimental results showed significant variations on the main variables affecting the fire weather and a significant increase in the burn probability in a fire-prone area of the Mediterranean basin.