Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Annual area burned correlates with temperature and fuel aridity, yet extreme wildfire outcomes arise from a small fraction of fires and rapid-growth days. This asymmetry indicates that thermodynamic favorability sets background susceptibility but does not determine when extreme growth occurs. This Perspective proposes a cross-scale framework that distinguishes susceptibility from regime-conditioned event-scale realization. At seasonal and regional scales, temperature and humidity influence fuel dryness, ignition likelihood, and fire-season length, explaining substantial interannual variability in area burned. These variables vary smoothly in space and retain signal under aggregation. By contrast, extreme fire growth occurs during short-lived synoptic configurations that organize winds, pressure gradients, and stability into discrete opportunity windows that permit sustained spread. The strongest winds governing rapid spread are intermittent, terrain-structured, and often unresolved in coarse datasets or aggregated indices. Within these windows, terrain interactions, organized flow, and fire–atmosphere feedbacks can amplify growth until circulation patterns shift. Extreme wildfire behavior therefore operates as a gated joint-probability process requiring the coincidence of susceptibility (S), dynamical weather opportunity (W), and ignition (I). Separating susceptibility from realization reconciles strong climate–fire correlations with the dynamical control of event-scale extremes.
Source: Fire
DOI: 10.3390/fire9040164
Author: Janice L. Coen
Language: English
Topic: Fire effects on ecosystems
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
Awards: G1335240794, G217329666, G2244277722, The Management and Operation of the National Center for Atmoshperic Research (NCAR), G2371765372, G2788907842, G2823802675, G3208224660, G414484714, G4393256757, G4618643727, G5185506710, G5233984941, Collaborative Research:CPS:Medium:SMAC-FIRE: Closed-Loop Sensing, Modeling and Communications for WildFIRE, G5746984541, G5886035632, Collaborative Research: CPS: Medium: Wildland Fire Observation, Management, and Evacuation using Intelligent Collaborative Flying and Ground Systems, G6936730583, G7290432784, G7314565280, G7459657340, G7920750969, G8034015138, G893658968, G974117020
OpenAlex ID: W7154171301
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