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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fort Collins, Colorado » Center for Agricultural Resources Research » Water Management and Systems Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #412666
Research Project: Improving Resiliency of Semi-Arid Agroecosystems and Watersheds to Change and Disturbance through Data-Driven Research, AI, and Integrated Models

Location: Water Management and Systems Research

Title: Drought-fuelled overnight burning propels large fires in North America

Author
item BALCH, JENNIFER - University Of Colorado
item Mahood, Adam

Submitted to: Nature
Publication Type: Research Notes
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/13/2024
Publication Date: 3/13/2024
Citation: Balch, J.K., Mahood, A.L. 2024. Drought-fuelled overnight burning propels large fires in North America. Nature. 627:273-274. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00536-4.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00536-4

Interpretive Summary: This is a short article that presents our view of the context around a new paper by Luo et al that analyzes overnight burn events (OBE). They found that OBE's were associated with extreme fires, and were also predictable based on daytime conditions. We pointed out that there was a need for broader scale study, since their study was confined to the US and Canada, which represents about 1% of the world's burned area.

Technical Abstract: Luo et al. discovered that overnight burning events (OBE) occur when wildfires burn through the night and into the next day, and are an important factor driving large wildfires in the United States and Canada (2017-2020). They found that OBEs most often occurred when there were long periods of accumulated dry fuel, which allows for the use of daytime conditions to predict OBEs. Future research could expand the geographic scope beyond the United States and Canada, which represents only 1.2 percent of global burned area.