TY - JOUR PY - 2018// TI - Exacerbated fires in Mediterranean Europe due to anthropogenic warming projected with non-stationary climate-fire models JO - Nature communications A1 - Turco, Marco A1 - Rosa-Cánovas, Juan José A1 - Bedia, Joaquín A1 - Jerez, Sonia A1 - Montávez, Juan Pedro A1 - Llasat, Maria Carmen A1 - Provenzale, Antonello SP - e3821 EP - e3821 VL - 9 IS - 1 N2 - The observed trend towards warmer and drier conditions in southern Europe is projected to continue in the next decades, possibly leading to increased risk of large fires. However, an assessment of climate change impacts on fires at and above the 1.5 °C Paris target is still missing. Here, we estimate future summer burned area in Mediterranean Europe under 1.5, 2, and 3 °C global warming scenarios, accounting for possible modifications of climate-fire relationships under changed climatic conditions owing to productivity alterations. We found that such modifications could be beneficial, roughly halving the fire-intensifying signals. In any case, the burned area is robustly projected to increase. The higher the warming level is, the larger is the increase of burned area, ranging from ~40% to ~100% across the scenarios. Our results indicate that significant benefits would be obtained if warming were limited to well below 2 °C.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 2041-1723 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06358-z ID - ref1 ER -