| The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), is currently being developed in the
framework of the Copernicus Emergency Management Services to monitor and forecast fire
danger in Europe. The system provides timely information to civil protection authorities in 38
nations across Europe and mostly concentrates on flagging regions which might be at high
danger of spontaneous ignition due to persistent drought. The daily predictions of fire danger
conditions are based on the US Forest Service National Fire Danger Rating System
(NFDRS), the Canadian forest service Fire Weather Index Rating System (FWI) and the
Australian McArthur (MARK-5) rating systems. Weather forcings are provided in real time
by the European Centre for Medium range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) forecasting
system.
The global system’s potential predictability is assessed using re-analysis fields as
weather forcings. The Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4) provides 11 years
of observed burned areas from satellite measurements and is used as a validation
dataset. The fire indices implemented are good predictors to highlight dangerous
conditions. High values are correlated with observed fire and low values correspond to
non observed events. A more quantitative skill evaluation was performed using
the Extremal Dependency Index which is a skill score specifically designed for
rare events. It revealed that the three indices were more skilful on a global scale
than the random forecast to detect large fires. The performance peaks in the boreal
forests, in the Mediterranean, the Amazon rain-forests and southeast Asia. The
skill-scores were then aggregated at country level to reveal which nations could
potentiallty benefit from the system information in aid of decision making and fire
control support. Overall we found that fire danger modelling based on weather
forecasts, can provide reasonable predictability over large parts of the global landmass. |