Severe fire activity and associated atmospheric patterns over Iberia and North Africa

Abstract

Biomass burning is extremely important at the global, regional and local scales and has impressive impacts at the atmospheric, climatic, environmental and socio-economical levels. The temperate biome of the Mediterranean regions is characterised by rainy and mild winters followed by warm and dry summers that make the region especially prone to the occurrence of a large number of summer fire events. In this context, the 10-year (2003 – 2012) MODIS fire data, provided by the MODIS Fire Team (University of Maryland) is used to characterize the spatial and the temporal distribution of fire activity over western region of the Mediterranean basin, paying special attention to large fire episodes. Finally, an assessment of the role of meteorological conditions on large fire events is performed based on the analysis of low and mid atmospheric fields of geopotential, air temperature, relative humidity and wind.