“Fires of Unusual Size: Future of Extreme and Emerging Wildfires in a
Warming United States (2020-2060)”
Abstract
Observed increases in wildfire activity across the contiguous United
States, which have occurred amid a warming climate and expanding
residential footprint within flammable landscapes, illustrate the
urgency of understanding near-future changes in fire regimes. Here, we
use a statistical model including future projections of both human
population distribution and atmospheric conditions from climate models
to predict the number, size, and cumulative area burned by wildfires. We
find an overall increase in both the number of fires (+56%) and total
burned area (+60%) during 2020-2060 relative to a 1984-2019 baseline,
as well as ubiquitous increases in area burned (+63%) by the largest
fires. Additionally, we predict the emergence of observationally
unprecedented fire frequency in eastern U.S. locations where wildfire
was rare historically (+71%), and unprecedented increases in the size
of the largest fires in the Western U.S. where fires were historically
common—underscoring the need to prepare for more frequent and severe
fire even in communities unaccustomed to them.