Detecting Rising Wildfire Risks for South East England
In July 2022 southeast England experienced a record breaking heatwave and unprecedented wildfires in urban areas. We investigate fire weather trends since 1960 in southeast England using a large ensemble of initialised climate models. Record smashing temperatures coincided with widespread fires in London, and we find that while wildfire risk was high, it was not record breaking. We show that between the 1960s and 2010s annual maximum daily fire weather has increased. The proportion of summertime days with high and very high fire risk has increased-while medium and low risk days have become less common. These findings show the need to mitigate against the increasing risk of wildfire caused by climate change.
Authors
- Vikki Thompson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1650-7354)
- Gillian Kay (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8436-0964)
- Nick Dunstone (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6859-6814)
- Hannah Bloomfield (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5616-1503)
- Nathanael Melia (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1138-7776)
- Dann Mitchell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0117-3486)
Institutions
- Met Office (GB)
- Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (NL)
- University of Bristol (GB)
- Victoria University of Wellington (NZ)
- Rotorua Hospital (NZ)
- Newcastle University (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Climate Resilience and Sustainability
- Published
- 2025-01-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/cli2.70002
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Fire effects on ecosystems
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.21
Funders
- Sight Research UK
- Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
- New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade
- Natural Environment Research Council