Liu et al. (2025) Global burned area dynamics and time-lagged relationships with climate teleconnections from 1982 to 2018

Identification

• Journal: Global and Planetary Change
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-10-15
• Authors: Ruoshui Liu, Junyu Qi, Qianfeng Wang
• DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.105122

Research Groups

• The Academy of Digital China (Fujian)/College of Environmental & Safety Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350116, China
• Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA

Short Summary

This study investigated global burned area dynamics from 1982 to 2018 and its time-lagged relationships with 11 Climate Teleconnection Indices (CTIs), revealing distinct temporal trends in burned area and varying lag correlations across different climate zones.

Objective

• To explore how global fire activity relates to large-scale climate variability using the Fire-CCILT11 burned area dataset and 11 Climate Teleconnection Indices (CTIs) spanning 1982 to 2018.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global
• Temporal Scale: 1982 to 2018 (37 years)

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Theil-Sen trend analysis, Mann-Kendall trend analysis, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), time-lagged correlation techniques.
• Data sources: Fire Climate Change Initiative Long Time Series 11 (Fire-CCILT11) burned area dataset, 11 Climate Teleconnection Indices (CTIs).

Main Results

• Global burned area increased between 1982 and 2000 at a rate of 0.015 Mkm² per year.
• Global burned area declined from 2001 to 2018 at a rate of 0.034 Mkm² per year.
• Burned area peaks mainly occurred during JJA (June, July, August), JAS (July, August, September), and ASO (August, September, October).
• The Tropical North Atlantic (TNA) and Eastern Pacific (EP) indices showed the highest correlations with burned area across different lag times among the 11 CTIs.
• Tropical, arid, temperate, and polar zones showed strong positive correlations at 0-, 3-, 6-, and 9-month lags, respectively, with over 50% of areas affected.
• Key lag periods per CTI were mapped by continent.

Contributions

• Enhances the understanding of global fire–climate connections.
• Supports improved fire management and climate adaptation efforts.

Funding

• Not specified in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Liu2025Global,
  author = {Liu, Ruoshui and Qi, Junyu and Wang, Qianfeng},
  title = {Global burned area dynamics and time-lagged relationships with climate teleconnections from 1982 to 2018},
  journal = {Global and Planetary Change},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.105122},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.105122}
}