Detecting, Monitoring and Foreseeing Wildland Fire Requires Similar Multiscale Viewpoints as Meteorology and Climatology

Abstract

Achieving sustainable coexistence with wildfires in the Anthropocene requires skilful integrated fire observations, fire behaviour predictions, forecasts of fire risk, and projections of change to fire climates. The diverse and multiscale approaches used by the atmospheric sciences, to understand geographic patterns, temporal trends and likely trajectories of weather and climate, provide a role model for how multiscale assessments of fire danger can be formulated and delivered to fire managers, emergency responders and at-risk communities. Adaptation to escalating risk of fire disasters requires specialised national agencies, like weather services, that provide to provide a diverse range of products to enable detection and near and longer-range prediction of landscape fire activity.

Keywords

• climate change
• emergency fire management
• earth system models
• climate change model
• fire behaviour model
• fire detection