Abstract
Abstract. Almost USD 3 billion per year is appropriated for wildfire management on public land in the United
States. Recent studies have suggested that ongoing climate change will lead to warmer and drier
conditions in the western United States, with a consequent increase in the number and size of
wildfires, yet large uncertainty exists in these projections. To assess the influence of future
changes in climate and land cover on lightning-caused wildfires in the national forests and parks
of the western United States and the consequences of these fires on air quality, we link a dynamic
vegetation model that includes a process-based representation of fire (LPJ-LMfire) to a global
chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem). Under a scenario of moderate future climate change (RCP4.5),
increasing lightning-caused wildfire enhances the burden of smoke fine particulate matter (PM),
with mass concentration increases of ∼53 % by the late 21st century during the fire
season in the national forests and parks of the western United States. In a high-emissions
scenario (RCP8.5), smoke PM concentrations double by 2100. RCP8.5 also shows enhanced
lightning-caused fire activity, especially over forests in the northern states.
Funder
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Cited by
25 articles.
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