Climate Change and Wildfires: Projecting Future Wildfire Potential | Four Twenty Seven | Report

INSIGHT by Four Twenty Seven (427mt.com)

Western Australia could endure three more months of wildfire potential annually by 2030- 2040, while far northern latitudes, like Siberia, will be increasingly likely to burn.

| Four Twenty Seven, an affiliate of Moody’s and the leading publisher of climate data for financial markets, shortly released a report analyzing future changes to wildfire potential globally. Areas ranging from California and Australia to the Amazon, Spain and the Arctic have experienced unprecedented loss of life and damage from wildfires in the past several years. Climate change is already making wildfires more severe and the new research finds that it will lead to longer wildfire seasons in areas already prone to wildfires, and create hotter and drier conditions that will expose entirely new areas. Understanding which areas are exposed to changing wildfire conditions will help leaders in government, finance and public health to mitigate catastrophic loss.

This new analysis leverages a new set of analytics developed by Four Twenty Seven to provide the only known globally comparable dataset on future wildfire potential in a changing climate at a scale of 25 kilometers by 25 kilometers. The analysis is built upon the two key factors of soil moisture deficit and wildfire fuel type and incorporates data from global climate models to provide a view of changing conditions to 2030-2040, capturing both absolute and relative change in frequency and severity.

Key Findings of the report, Climate Change and Wildfires: Projecting Future Wildfire Potential, include:

〉In areas already exposed to wildfires, by 2030-2040 climate change will prolong wildfire seasons, adding up to three months of days with high wildfire potential in Western Australia, over two months in regions of northern California and a month in European countries including Spain, Portugal and Greece.

〉New wildfire risks will emerge in historically wet and cool regions, such as Siberia, which is projected to have 20 more days of high wildfire potential in 2030-2040.

〉Globally, western portions of the Amazon and Southeast Asia will experience the largest relative increases in wildfire severity, further threatening crucial biodiversity hotspots and carbon sinks.

〉Confronting this new risk will take unprecedented resources and new approaches in regions not familiar with wildfires and worsening wildfire seasons will continue to threaten already limited resources in currently exposed areas.

In addition to the report, these wildfire potential scores are now available on-demand in Four Twenty Seven’sPhysical Climate Risk Application for real assets. “As the climate changes, we are witnessing the effects of more frequent and severe wildfires. We developed the model to show where these changes will be the greatest in the coming decades, and ultimately, provide communities and markets with a robust, forward-looking dataset to help plan ahead,” says Nik Steinberg, Twenty Seven’s Managing Director of Research.

A full copy of the report can be found via this link.

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Four Twenty Seven (427mt.com), an affiliate of Moody’s, is a leading publisher and provider of data, marketintelligence and analysis related to physical climate and environmental risks. We tackle physical risk head on with analytics that identify the exposure of any location in the world to climate change hazards such floods, sea level rise, hurricanes & typhoons, heat stress and water stress, which pose an immediate threat to investment and loan portfolios.