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Projections of future fire risk under climate change over the South African savanna

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Abstract

Rising surface air temperatures, coupled with delays in the onset of austral summer rains and increased fuel load have amplified forest fire risk over southern Africa. This study investigates interactions between climate change and fire risk in South Africa’s northern savanna biome. We employ the CCAM model to simulate the reference climate and project future forest fire risk on the savanna. An ensemble of six CMIP5 GCMs were downscaled to 8 km to project climate change in the far-future (2080 to 2099) under RCP8.5 emission scenario. The models were validated using ERA5-Land reanalyses whilst future projections focused on the 10th, 50th and 90th percentiles. The frequency of high fire risk days was calculated using a McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) which links meteorological variables to fire danger. The ensemble simulated widespread temperature rises of between 4.5 and 6 °C across the savanna, whilst rainfall is projected to decline by up to 20 mm/month, with corresponding decreases in minimum relative humidity. Heat wave days are projected to increase to above 8 days per annum, whilst soil moisture deficiency increases by above 50 mm on the savanna. Consequently, mean annual high fire danger days are projected to reach a peak frequency of 25 days in October, with an autumnal secondary peak. Spatially, greater increases in high FFDI days were projected over the western savanna extending toward neighbouring Botswana. This study contributes to understanding fire risk under unprecedented temperature rises which appear to be modulating fire intensity in the study region.

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Data Availability

The CMIP5 GCM models were obtained from the Copernicus Climate Data Store website https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/#!/home.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by generous funding from South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF). We acknowledge the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped us improve the manuscript considerably.

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This study was supported and funded by the South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF).

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M.V.S. conceptualization, analyses, writing the original manuscript, H.C supervision, revised and edited the manuscript, F.A.E conceptualization, supervision, model simulations and comments, M.M.B edited manuscript and suggested changes, T.N edited the manuscript and provided comments, T.P.M edited the manuscript and provided comments, I.L.M edited the manuscript and provided comments, and F.M.M supervision and provided comments.

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Correspondence to Mukovhe V. Singo.

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Singo, M.V., Chikoore, H., Engelbrecht, F.A. et al. Projections of future fire risk under climate change over the South African savanna. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 37, 2677–2691 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-023-02412-5

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