Water Stewardship Information Sources
| ID | 1828 |
|---|---|
| Citation | D. W. van der Kamp, G. Bürger and A. T. Werner, 2013: Evaluation of the monthly drought code as a metric for fire weather in a region of complex terrain, and uncertainties in future projections. The Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 16 pp. |
| Organization | Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium |
| URL | https://www.pacificclimate.org/sites/default/files/publications/evaluation_of_the_monthly_drought_code.pdf |
| Abstract/Description or Keywords | Changes in both temperature and precipitation due to climate change will have a significant impact on future fire weather severity. The availability of a simple but skillful fire weather index would increase our ability to assess the magnitude and uncertainties of these impacts. We evaluated the Monthly Drought Code as a metric for fire weather and generated a suite of future projections of the Monthly Drought Code for regions throughout southeast British Columbia using statistical downscaling. Significant correlations between the Monthly Drought Code calculated at five airport stations and annual area burned were found with a maximum R2 of 0.68. These results compare favourably to: its own input variables; more sophisticated models; and other fire weather indices. Reconstruction skill of the historical Monthly Drought Code using statistical downscaling varied (R2 = 0.36 to 0.72), with the best results at drier stations. A suite of future projections was created using six global climate models and three emission scenarios. Projected changes range from insignificant changes to increases, the latter suggesting important shifts in fire frequency. This range was primarily due to a large ensemble spread in precipitation projections across climate models. |
| Information Type | Report |
| Regional Watershed | |
| Sub-watershed if known | |
| Aquifer # | |
| Comments | |
| Project status | |
| Contact Name | |
| Contact Email |