HR: 0800h
AN: A21B-0856    [Abstracts]
TI: Future Area Burned in the Western U.S.
AU: * Spracklen, D V
EM: dvs@io.harvard.edu
AF: Harvard University, DEAS/DEPS, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 United States
AU: Logan, J A
EM: jal@io.harvard.edu
AF: Harvard University, DEAS/DEPS, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 United States
AU: Mickley, L J
EM: ljm@io.harvard.edu
AF: Harvard University, DEAS/DEPS, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 United States
AU: Flannigan, M D
EM: mike.flannigan@nrcan.gc.ca
AF: Canadian Forest Service, Great Lakes Forestry Centre, 1219 Queen Street East, Sault Ste. Marie, ON P6A 2E5 Canada
AU: Westerling, A L
EM: leroy@ucsd.edu
AF: Climate Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, CA 0224 United States
AB: Climate change has the potential to influence forest fires in the U.S. and Canada with consequent effects on U.S. air quality. Here we develop new area burned predicton schemes for the Western U.S. We plan to combine these schemes with output from a general circulation model (GCM) to predict areas of forest fires in the Western U.S. between 2000 and 2050. We use linear stepwise regression to determine the best predictors for area burned for different ecosystems in the western U.S. following the approach of Flannigan et al. (2005), which was applied to forest fires in Canada. We use an existing 20 year database for area burned in the Western U.S. and relate areas burned to meteorological variables including temperature, humidity, wind speed and precipitation and also components of the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) System. We will use simulations of future climate from the NASA/GISS GCM along with our new area burned prediction scheme to develop scenarios for future area burned between 2000 and 2050. Future work will make a first assesment of future fires on U.S. air quality.
DE: 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry
DE: 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005