On the key role of droughts in the dynamics of summer fires in Mediterranean Europe

Summer fires frequently rage across Mediterranean Europe, often intensified by high temperatures and droughts. According to the state-of-the-art regional fire risk projections, in forthcoming decades climate effects are expected to become stronger and possibly overcome fire prevention efforts. However, significant uncertainties exist and the direct effect of climate change in regulating fuel moisture (e.g. warmer conditions increasing fuel dryness) could be counterbalanced by the indirect effects on fuel structure (e.g. warmer conditions limiting fuel amount), affecting the transition between climate-driven and fuel-limited fire regimes as temperatures increase. Here we analyse and model the impact of coincident drought and antecedent wet conditions (proxy for the climatic factor influencing total fuel and fine fuel structure) on the summer Burned Area (BA) across all eco-regions in Mediterranean Europe. This approach allows BA to be linked to the key drivers of fire in the region. We show a statistically significant relationship between fire and same-summer droughts in most regions, while antecedent climate conditions play a relatively minor role, except in few specific eco-regions. The presented models for individual eco-regions provide insights on the impacts of climate variability on BA, and appear to be promising for developing a seasonal forecast system supporting fire management strategies.We thank the European Forest Fire Information System-EFFIS (http://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu) of the European Commission Joint Research Centre for the fire data. We acknowledge the SPEI data providers (http://sac.csic. es/spei/database.html). Special thanks to Joaquín Bedia, Esteve Canyameras, Xavier Castro and Andrej Ceglar for helpful discussions on the study. This work was partially funded by the Project of Interest “NextData” of the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research and by the EU H2020 Project 641762 “ECOPOTENTIAL: Improving Future Ecosystem Benefits through Earth Observations”. Ricardo Trigo was supported by IMDROFLOOD funded by Portuguese FCT (WaterJPI/0004/2014).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

New observational insights into the atmospheric circulation over the Euro‑Atlantic sector since 1685

Wind direction kept in ships’ logbooks is a consolidated but underexploited observational source of relevant climatic information. In this paper, we present four indices of the monthly frequency of wind direction, one for each cardinal direction: Northerly (NI), Easterly (EI), Southerly (SI) and Westerly (WI), based on daily wind direction observations taken aboard ships over the English Channel. These Directional Indices (DIs) are the longest observational record of atmospheric circulation to date at the daily scale, covering the 1685–2014 period. DIs anomalies are associated with near-surface climatic signals over large areas of Europe in all seasons, with zonal indices (WI and EI) and meridional indices (NI and SI) often afecting different regions. Statistical models including all DIs are able to explain a considerable amount of European climate variability, in most cases higher than that accounted for by the North Atlantic Oscillation. As such, the DIs are able to reproduce the known European climatic history and provide new insights of certain episodes from monthly to multi-decadal time scales such as the warm winter decade of 1730–1739 or the extremely cold 1902 summer. The DIs show the potential to better constrain the atmospheric circulation response to external forcings and its associated anomalies. In particular, we provide frst observational evidences of all year-round atmospheric circulation signals following the strongest tropical volcanic eruptions of the last three centuries. These signatures are more complex than previously thought and suggest that the well-reported winter warming and summer cooling cannot be simply interpreted in terms of changes in zonality

A centennial catalogue of hydro-geomorphological compound events and corresponding atmospheric forcing

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Catálogo de eventos hidro-geomorfológicos em Portugal Continental (1865-2015)

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The hydro-geomorphologic event of february 1979: weather conditions and impacts

The large amount of floods and landslides that occurred on 5-16 February 1979 in Portugal corresponds to a major hydro-geomorphologic event according to the comprehensive DISASTER database. This event is driven by atmospheric forcing at different time scales that have not been, as yet, studied in detail. Here we show that the precipitation period of February 1979 has produced several multiday accumulated precipitation events, over the Portuguese continental territory, ranking amongst the top 10 events observed between 1950 and 2008. Additionally, most of the precipitation on this event occurs in days with atmospheric circulation dominated by “wet” circulation weather types (CWTs), i.e. cyclonic (C), west (W) or southwest (SW) types.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Extreme precipitation and floods in the Iberian Peninsula and its socio-economic impacts.

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Saharan air intrusions as a relevant mechanism for Iberian heatwaves: the record breaking events of August 2018 and June 2019

The summers of 2018 and 2019 were characterized by unusually warm conditions over Europe. Here, we describe the intense heatwaves striking the Iberian Peninsula in early August 2018 and late June 2019. The 2018 episode was relatively short-lived but outstanding in amplitude, particularly in western Iberia. Similar to previous mega-heatwaves, the 2019 event was long-lasting and affected large areas of western and central Europe, including eastern Iberia. During these events, many absolute temperature records were broken in western and eastern Iberia, respectively (some of them standing since 2003). In both cases, a cyclonic circulation off the coast in the northeastern Atlantic and a strong subtropical ridge pattern over the affected area promoted the advection of an anomalously warm air mass. This paper highlights the role of these very warm, stable and dry air intrusions of Saharan origin in the western and eastern Iberia heatwave events. Using a thermodynamical classification based on the geopotential height thickness and potential temperature, we show how the magnitude and poleward extension of these Saharan intrusions were unprecedented in the period since 1948. The relationship between Iberian heatwaves and Saharan warm air intrusions is discussed in the long-term context, showing a closer link in southern sectors of the Peninsula. However, a consistent poleward trend in the latitudinal extension of these subtropical intrusions reveals their increasing relevance for heatwaves in northern sectors of Iberia and western Europe. This overall trend is accompanied by an apparent “see-saw” in the occurrence of subtropical intrusions between eastern and western Iberia on multi-decadal scales

Eventos hidrogeomorfológicos em Portugal e a sua associação com os "weather types"

In recent years it has been possible to improve the characterization of past floods and landslides that caused human and economic impact in Portugal for the 1865-2015 period. In this regard there is an urge for a more systematic assessment of the atmospheric circulation at the synoptic scale associated to flood and landslide damaging events to correctly characterize the climatic forcing of hydro-geomorphologic risk in Portugal. Here we provide a comprehensive analysis of the atmospheric circulation based on the weather type classification, an automated version of the Lamb weather type procedure, initially developed for the United Kingdom and often named circulation weather types (CWT) and latter adapted for Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A century and half of hydrogeomorphological disasters in Mainland Portugal

The disaster database lists disastrous floods and landslides registered in mainland Portugal in the period 1865–2015, based on data collected from newspapers. The database includes 1950 hydrogeomorphological disaster cases that caused 1256 deaths, 14,884 evacuated people and 41,977 displaced people. Disastrous floods are clustered in the Lisbon region and the Tagus valley, in the Oporto region and the Douro valley, in the Coimbra region and the Mondego valley and along the Vouga valley. Disastrous landslides are clustered in the Lisbon region and the Douro valley. The period 1935–1969 registered the highest number of disastrous floods and landslides, whereas the last 45 years of the series (1970–2015) do not show any clear temporal trend. However, the 10-year moving average increased at the beginning of the twenty-first century, for floods and landslides, and it is apparent the increasing number of disaster events consisting of several cases, which may result from the increasing occurrence of rainfall extreme events related with climate change. The spatial and temporal trends observed on disastrous floods and landslides reflect the distribution of conditioning factors, the temporal incidence of triggering factors, but also the evolution of the exposure and the vulnerability of people, structures and infrastructures.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Assessing the role played by meteorological conditions on the interannual variability of fire activity in four subregions of Iberia

The Iberian Peninsula is recurrently affected by severe wildfires resulting from an interplay of human activities, landscape features and atmospheric conditions. Aims. The role played by atmospheric conditions on wildfire activity in 2001–2020 is assessed in four pyror- egions of the Iberian Peninsula. Methods. Wildfire activity is characterised by Fire Radiative Power (FRP) and meteorological danger is rated by the Fire Weather Index (FWI). The distribution of log 10 FRP in each pyroregion consists of a truncated lognormal central body with Generalised Pareto distributions as tails, and the model is improved using FWI as covariate. Synthetic time series of total annual FRP are generated using the models with and without FWI as covariate, and compared against observed FRP. Key results. Pyroregions NW, N, SW and E present increases of 1, 5, 6 and 7% in interannual explained variance of FRP when progressing from the model without to that with FWI as covariate. Conclusions. The models developed characterise the role of meteorological conditions on fire activity in the Iberian Peninsula, and are especially valuable when comparing expected impacts for different scenarios of climate change. Implications. The largest effects of atmospheric conditions on fire activity are in regions of the IP where the strongest impact of climate change is expectedinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio