Is Portugal Starting to Burn All Year Long? The Transboundary Fire in January 2022

Changes in the large fire seasons induced by climate variability may have implications in several sectors of modern society. This communication aims to investigate possible changes in the behaviour of active fires during the wintertime and document an event that occurred in the transboundary mountainous region in the north-western Iberian Peninsula between Portugal and Spain on 28 January 2022. The VIIRS active fire data, a satellite product, were analysed for the period between December 2012 and February 2022. The Meso-NH model was used to explore the atmospheric conditions during the event that burned almost 2400 ha. It was configured in a single domain with a horizontal resolution of 1500 m (300 × 300 grid points). The study highlights an increase in fire occurrence during the winter of 2021/22 and indicates that climate variability may create atmospheric conditions propitious for fire development even during the winter. The mild temperatures, dry air, and easterly flow affecting northern Portugal played an important role in the fire that occurred on 28 January 2022. Local orographic effects associated with downslope flow favoured fire propagation. Given the lack of knowledge about large winter fires, this study can be a starting point for future research on this subject.

[1]  M. Potes,et al.  Modelling the Atmospheric Environment Associated with a Wind-Driven Fire Event in Portugal , 2022, Atmosphere.

[2]  R. Bradstock,et al.  The 2019–2020 Australian forest fires are a harbinger of decreased prescribed burning effectiveness under rising extreme conditions , 2022, Scientific Reports.

[3]  J. P. Díaz,et al.  Projections of wildfire weather danger in the Canary Islands , 2022, Scientific Reports.

[4]  M. Chin,et al.  New seasonal pattern of pollution emerges from changing North American wildfires , 2022, Nature Communications.

[5]  D. Viegas,et al.  Influence of Convectively Driven Flows in the Course of a Large Fire in Portugal: The Case of Pedrógão Grande , 2022, Atmosphere.

[6]  A. P. Williams,et al.  The season for large fires in Southern California is projected to lengthen in a changing climate , 2022, Communications Earth & Environment.

[7]  A. Russo,et al.  Assessing the role of compound drought and heatwave events on unprecedented 2020 wildfires in the Pantanal , 2021, Environmental Research Letters.

[8]  V. Masson,et al.  Subgrid-scale fire front reconstruction for ensemble coupled atmosphere-fire simulations of the FireFlux I experiment , 2021, Fire Safety Journal.

[9]  P. Moore.  An analysis of storm Ophelia which struck Ireland on 16 October 2017 , 2021, Weather.

[10]  N. Guiomar,et al.  Forest Fires in Madeira Island and the Fire Weather Created by Orographic Effects , 2021, Atmosphere.

[11]  A. Pitman,et al.  Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia , 2021, Communications Earth & Environment.

[12]  I. Pytharoulis,et al.  Numerical investigation of atmosphere-fire interactions during high-impact wildland fire events in Greece , 2021 .

[13]  J. Pinty,et al.  Lightning modelling for the research of forest fire ignition in Portugal , 2020 .

[14]  C. Clements,et al.  Evolution of Plume Core Structures and Turbulence during a Wildland Fire Experiment , 2020, Atmosphere.

[15]  E. Katragkou,et al.  A complex aerosol transport event over Europe during the 2017 Storm Ophelia in CAMS forecast systems: analysis and evaluation , 2020, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

[16]  C. Clements,et al.  The 2018 Camp Fire: Meteorological Analysis Using In Situ Observations and Numerical Simulations , 2019, Atmosphere.

[17]  T. Bolch,et al.  Importance and vulnerability of the world’s water towers , 2019, Nature.

[18]  R. Bradstock,et al.  Climate change effects on the frequency, seasonality and interannual variability of suitable prescribed burning weather conditions in south-eastern Australia , 2019, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

[19]  P. Jakus,et al.  Wildfire, national park visitation, and changes in regional economic activity , 2019, Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism.

[20]  D. Moore.  The October 2017 red sun phenomenon over the UK , 2019, Weather.

[21]  A. Saiz-Lopez,et al.  Study of the exceptional meteorological conditions, trace gases and particulate matter measured during the 2017 forest fire in Doñana Natural Park, Spain. , 2018, The Science of the total environment.

[22]  M. Potes,et al.  Breeze effects at a large artificial lake: summer case study , 2018, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

[23]  J. Filippi,et al.  Simulation of a Large Wildfire in a Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Model , 2018, Atmosphere.

[24]  Pierre Aumond,et al.  Overview of the Meso-NH model version 5.4 and its applications , 2018, Geoscientific Model Development.

[25]  Matthias Huss,et al.  Global-scale hydrological response to future glacier mass loss , 2018, Nature Climate Change.

[26]  M. J. Costa,et al.  Understanding significant precipitation in Madeira island using high‐resolution numerical simulations of real cases , 2017 .

[27]  M. J. Costa,et al.  Numerical simulations of significant orographic precipitation in Madeira island , 2016 .

[28]  W. Schroeder,et al.  The New VIIRS 375 m active fire detection data product: Algorithm description and initial assessment , 2014 .

[29]  R. Bradstock,et al.  Contrasting fire responses to climate and management: insights from two Australian ecosystems , 2013, Global change biology.

[30]  Alina Barbu,et al.  The SURFEXv7.2 land and ocean surface platform for coupled or offline simulation of earth surface variables and fluxes , 2012 .

[31]  R. Bradstock,et al.  Wildfires, fuel treatment and risk mitigation in Australian eucalypt forests: insights from landscape-scale simulation. , 2012, Journal of environmental management.

[32]  Jean-Baptiste Filippi,et al.  Simulation of Coupled Fire/Atmosphere Interaction with the MesoNH-ForeFire Models , 2010 .

[33]  Sylvie Malardel,et al.  A Parameterization of Dry Thermals and Shallow Cumuli for Mesoscale Numerical Weather Prediction , 2009 .

[34]  Ewen James. Michael,et al.  Hazard or disaster : tourism management for the inevitable in Northeast Victoria. , 2007 .

[35]  J. Redelsperger,et al.  A turbulence scheme allowing for mesoscale and large‐eddy simulations , 2000 .