Fire activity based on Meteosat-8

What is it about?

We study the spatial distribution of fire events over Mediterranean Europe during the period of July and August 2007–2009. For this analysis we use remote-sensed information, as provided by the SEVIRI instrument on-board Meteosat-8. This information is especially valuable for forest and civil protection activities.

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Why is it important?

A new conceptual model for meteorological conditions favouring the occurrence of severe wildfire episodes in Italy and the Balkan Peninsula is suggested by the analysis of these two extreme events of fire activity on Greece and Italy on 24–25 July and 22–27 August, 2007. On the one hand there is, at the surface, strong northerly advection of very hot and very dry air over the region, as steered by the presence of a ridge over central Europe together with a thermal depression over southwest Asia. On the other hand, the air advected is further heated by adiabatic compression associated to strong subsidence from around 700 up to 250 hPa, associated to the presence of a ridge over the Eastern Mediterranean and to the anomalous displacement of the jet streak towards the northwest. We also put into evidence the importance of both short- and long-term atmospheric conditions on meteorological fire risk by analyzing the fields of three weather-based indices (the Build-Up Index, the Initial Spread Index and the Fire Weather Index) that are part of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System. We show the usefulness of using data on fire activity as derived from Meteosat-8/SEVIRI to generate statistically calibrated maps of fire risk in Mediterranean Europe by identifying links of fire onset and fire persistence with land cover types and with atmospheric circulation patterns.