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How does climate change affect forest fires?

Forest fires have four factors that affect them; Fuel, Ignition, Humans and Weather

The world's average temperature is expected to rise 5.8°c by 2100. 

 The relation between global temperature and fires

 

Temprature is a key variable for forest fires in 3 ways 

The amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold is highly sensitive to temperature. This drives fuel moisture; if temperature increases then significant increases in precipitation are needed to compensate. With the amount of moisture decreasing, forest are prone to larger and more untolerable fires.

Temperature has a strong positive correlation with lightning…the warmer it is, the more lightning we will have. With increased lightning comes a greater risk of nature caused forest fires. 

The warmer it is the longer the fire season; particularly important at high northern latitudes. In places such as Canada, this means more fires and more hectares

of trees burned.

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