The Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Wildfires across Australia and Their Connections to Extreme Climate Based on a Combined Hydrological Drought Index

Abstract

With the frequent occurrence of extreme climates around the world, the frequency of regional wildfires is also on the rise, which poses a serious threat to the safety of human life, property, and regional ecosystems. To investigate the role of extreme climates in the occurrence and spread of wildfires, we combined precipitation, evapotranspiration, soil moisture (SM), maximum temperature (MT), relative humidity, plant canopy water, vapor pressure deficit, and a combined hydrological drought index based on six Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its follow-on (GRACE-FO) products to study the relationship between climate change and wildfires across Australia between 2003 and 2020. The results show that Australia’s wildfires are mainly concentrated in the northern region, with a small number being distributed along the southeastern coast. The high burned months are September (2.5941 × 106 ha), October (4.9939 × 106 ha), and November (3.8781 × 106 ha), while the years with a larger burned area are 2011 (79.95 × 106 ha) and 2012 (78.33 × 106 ha) during the study period. On a seasonal scale, the terrestrial water storage change and the hydrometeorological factors have the strong correlations with burned area, while for only the drought index, SM and MT are strongly related to burned area on an interannual scale. By comparing the data between the high burned and normal years, the impact of droughts on wildfires is achieved through two aspects: (1) the creation of a dry atmospheric environment, and (2) the accumulation of natural combustibles. Extreme climates affect wildfires through the occurrence of droughts. Among them, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation has the greatest impact on drought in Australia, followed by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole (correlation coefficients are −0.33, −0.31, and −0.23, respectively), but there is little difference among the three. The proposed hydrological drought index in our study has the potential to provide an early warning of regional wildfires. Our results have a certain reference significance for comprehensively understanding the impact mechanism of extreme climates on regional wildfires and for establishing an early warning system for regional wildfires.