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© 2020. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Global fire-vegetation models are widely used to assess impacts of environmental change on fire regimes and the carbon cycle and to infer relationships between climate, land use and fire. However, differences in model structure and parameterizations, in both the vegetation and fire components of these models, could influence overall model performance, and to date there has been limited evaluation of how well different models represent various aspects of fire regimes. The Fire Model Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) is coordinating the evaluation of state-of-the-art global fire models, in order to improve projections of fire characteristics and fire impacts on ecosystems and human societies in the context of global environmental change. Here we perform a systematic evaluation of historical simulations made by nine FireMIP models to quantify their ability to reproduce a range of fire and vegetation benchmarks. The FireMIP models simulate a wide range in global annual total burnt area (39–536 Mha) and global annual fire carbon emission (0.91–4.75 Pg C yr-1) for modern conditions (2002–2012), but most of the range in burnt area is within observational uncertainty (345–468 Mha). Benchmarking scores indicate that seven out of nine FireMIP models are able to represent the spatial pattern in burnt area. The models also reproduce the seasonality in burnt area reasonably well but struggle to simulate fire season length and are largely unable to represent interannual variations in burnt area. However, models that represent cropland fires see improved simulation of fire seasonality in the Northern Hemisphere. The three FireMIP models which explicitly simulate individual fires are able to reproduce the spatial pattern in number of fires, but fire sizes are too small in key regions, and this results in an underestimation of burnt area. The correct representation of spatial and seasonal patterns in vegetation appears to correlate with a better representation of burnt area. The two older fire models included in the FireMIP ensemble (LPJ–GUESS–GlobFIRM, MC2) clearly perform less well globally than other models, but it is difficult to distinguish between the remaining ensemble members; some of these models are better at representing certain aspects of the fire regime; none clearly outperforms all other models across the full range of variables assessed.

Details

Title
Quantitative assessment of fire and vegetation properties in simulations with fire-enabled vegetation models from the Fire Model Intercomparison Project
Author
Hantson, Stijn 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kelley, Douglas I 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Arneth, Almut 3 ; Harrison, Sandy P 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Archibald, Sally 5 ; Bachelet, Dominique 6 ; Forrest, Matthew 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Hickler, Thomas 8 ; Lasslop, Gitta 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Li, Fang 9   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Mangeon, Stephane 10 ; Melton, Joe R 11   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Nieradzik, Lars 12 ; Rabin, Sam S 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Prentice, I Colin 13   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Sheehan, Tim 6 ; Sitch, Stephen 14 ; Teckentrup, Lina 15 ; Voulgarakis, Apostolos 16 ; Chao, Yue 17   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Atmospheric Environmental Research, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany; Geospatial Data Solutions Center, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA 
 UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford OX10 8BB, UK 
 Atmospheric Environmental Research, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany 
 School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK 
 Centre for African Ecology, School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag X3, WITS, Johannesburg, 2050, South Africa 
 Biological and Ecological Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA 
 Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Institute (BiK-F), Senckenberganlage 25, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany 
 Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Institute (BiK-F), Senckenberganlage 25, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe University, Altenhöferallee 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany 
 International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 
10  Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK; now at: Data 61, CSIRO, Brisbane, Australia 
11  Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada 
12  Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, 22362 Lund, Sweden 
13  AXA Chair of Biosphere and Climate Impacts, Grand Challenges in Ecosystem and the Environment, Department of Life Sciences and Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London,Silwood Park Campus, Buckhurst Road, Ascot SL5 7PY, UK 
14  College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK 
15  ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Climate Change Research Center, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia 
16  Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK 
17  Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette, France 
Pages
3299-3318
Publication year
2020
Publication date
2020
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
ISSN
1991962X
e-ISSN
19919603
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2424367431
Copyright
© 2020. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.