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Amplified drought trends in Nepal increase the potential for Himalayan wildfires

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Abstract

In spring 2021, Nepal underwent a record wildfire season in which active fires were detected at a rate 10 times greater than the 2002–2020 average. Prior to these major wildfire events, the country experienced a prolonged precipitation deficit and extreme drought during the post-monsoon period (starting in October 2020). An analysis using observational, reanalysis, and climate model ensemble data indicates that both climate variability and climate change-induced severe drought conditions were at play. Further analysis of climate model outputs suggests the likely reoccurrence of drought conditions, thus favoring active wildfire seasons in Nepal throughout the twenty-first century. While the inter-model uncertainty is large and direct modeling of wildfire spread and suppression has not been completed, the demonstrated relationship between a drought index (the standardized precipitation and evapotranspiration index) and subsequent fire activity may offer actionable opportunities for forest managers to employ the monitoring and projection of climate anomalies at sub-seasonal to decadal timescales to inform their management strategies for Nepal’s wildlands.

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Data availability

MODIS active fire point data was used in this study can be freely accessed from https://firms2.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/download/, CMIP6 bias-corrected data is generated by Mishra et. al. (2020) and can be freely accessed from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3987736. CMIP6 GHG and Natural run data are freely available at https://www.wcrp-climate.org/wgcm-cmip/wgcm-cmip6. Ground-based rain-gauge data can be purchased from the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Government of Nepal (DHM, www.dhm.gov.np/) by email to the data section (metdatadhm@gmail.com). Rain gauge data are available in daily and monthly timescales.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, under Award Number DE-SC0016605. Pokharel, Wang, and Rhoades were funded by the “An Integrated Evaluation of the Simulated Hydroclimate System of the Continental U.S.” project (award no. DE-SC0016605). Wehner and Rhoades were also funded by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy Regional and Global Model Analysis Program (RGMA) under the “Calibrated and Systematic Characterization, and Attribution and Detection of Extremes (CASCADE)” Science Focus Area (award no. DE-AC02-05CH11231). Wang acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation P2C2 award number 1903721 and the U.S. SERDP Grant RC20-3056. Liu acknowledges funding from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology grant 110-2321-B-005-003. Weather data was provided by the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Government of Nepal. Stuivenvolt-Allen was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1633756.

Funding

Biological and Environmental Research,DE-SC0016605,S.-Y. Simon Wang

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Central Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Binod Pokharel, Shankar Sharma & Deepak Aryal

  2. Department of Plants, Soils and Climate, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

    Binod Pokharel, Jacob Stuivenvolt-Allen, Shih-Yu Simon Wang, Matthew LaPlante & Robert R. Gillies

  3. Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jacob Stuivenvolt-Allen

  4. Utah Climate Center, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

    Robert R. Gillies & Sarbajit Mukherjee

  5. Department of Journalism and Communication, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

    Matthew LaPlante

  6. Center for Analytical Sciences, Kathmandu Institute of Applied Sciences, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Sujan Khanal

  7. Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Michael Wehner

  8. Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Alan Rhoades

  9. Institut für Meteorologie, Freie Universität Berlin (FUB), Berlin, Germany

    Kalpana Hamal

  10. Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, USA

    Benjamin Hatchett

  11. Department of Forestry, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan

    Wan-Yu Liu

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Pokharel, B., Sharma, S., Stuivenvolt-Allen, J. et al. Amplified drought trends in Nepal increase the potential for Himalayan wildfires. Climatic Change 176, 17 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03495-3

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