VI International Conference on Forest Fire Research

D. X. Viegas (Ed.), 2010

Climate change impacts on forest fires in

southern Germany

Clemens Wastl
Technische Universitt Mnchen, Chair of Ecoclimatology, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-
Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany, wastl@wzw.tum.de
Michael Leuchner
Technische Universitt Mnchen, Chair of Ecoclimatology, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-
Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany, leuchner@wzw.tum.de
Annette Menzel
Technische Universitt Mnchen, Chair of Ecoclimatology, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-
Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany, menzel@forst.tu-muenchen.de

Abstract

In this study we simulated the impacts of climate change on forest fires in southern Germany.
Model simulations were performed with the regional numerical model COSMO-CLM. The model
was driven by the global model ECHAM 5 (scenario A1B) and the grid size of the presented
simulations is 0.2 (~ 18 km). To estimate forest fire danger we used the Canadian Fire Weather
Index (FWI) which was calculated daily within a control (19912000) and a scenario period
(2041-2050). We assumed that future vegetation will have similar fuel characteristics compared to
the present situation. Different methods of assessing future trends in forest fire danger were tested
in the complex topography of southern Germany.
Firstly, we compared the mean annual number of days with FWI > 10 between the control and the
scenario period. This analysis predicts a small increase of days with possible fire danger near the
Alps and a comparatively strong decrease in large parts of northern Bavaria and Baden-
Wrttemberg. This is mainly due to a projected increase in average precipitation in these regions
in the scenario period. In a second step we calculated the moisture content (MC, derived from the
Canadian Fine Fuel Moisture Content FFMC) with the meteorological data from the simulations.
This predicts decreasing MC values southwards of Munich and an increase in Franconia and
Baden-Wrttemberg. Lastly, we calculated a seasonal averaged fire danger (SSR). In this
approach the FWI is converted into a daily severity rating (DSR) which is then summed to get a
seasonal severity rating (SSR). While the SSR values are generally low (compared to southern
Europe or Canada) it becomes evident that fire danger is predicted to decrease in most parts of
southern Germany, except the Alps.
One problem that was apparent with the presented methods is the strong temperature dependence
of the Canadian forest fire danger rating system. Generally low FWI values appear in the elevated
topography in the south of the area due to low temperatures. One possibility to avoid this would be
to run the model with a higher resolution (< 10 km) or to use statistical downscaling methods.
Hence the valleys in a complex terrain would be better resolved and the resulting indices would be
much more consistent to reality. As a next step we are planning to test other indices (Baumgartner,
M68, Angstrom, McArthur, Nesterov) for their ability to assess fire danger in mountainous
regions.

Keywords: climate change, RCMs, forest fire danger, FWI, future trends
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D. X. Viegas (Ed.), 2010

1. Introduction:

Since the middle of the 19th century (beginning of industrialisation) temperatures have been
rising continuously all over the world due to forcings by greenhouse gases and sulphate
aerosols. The mean global temperature rise during these 150 years was around 1C (from
13.6C to 14.6C) and this warming is expected to intensify in the future. Numerous
GCMs (General Circulation Models) project a global increase of temperature until the end
of the 21st century of between 2 and 3C, based on the rather moderate emission scenario
A1B (IPCC, 2007). High latitudes and mountainous regions such as the Alps will
experience a much stronger warming (4 - 6C) due to feedback mechanisms (e.g. melting of
polar ice cap, glaciers; sea ice feedback).
Beside well known problems like the melting of glaciers or changes in the hydrological
cycle, increasing temperatures are very likely to cause changes to the frequency and size of
forest fires. For example, the number of fires in the southern Alps has strongly increased in
recent decades accompanied by an extension of the fire season. In contrast, forest fires play
only a minor role in the northern parts of the Alps. In Bavaria, for example, only around
600 forest fires occurred with a total burnt area of about 550 ha between 2001 and 2009
(Lachmann, 2008). However, changing climate could also have a strong impact on forest
fire regimes in these regions.
In recent years several studies have been undertaken to assess future fire danger using the
output of climate simulations. Stocks et al. (1998) combined model scenarios of a GCM
with weather and fire data from 1980 1989 in Canada and Russia. Based on the Canadian
Fire Weather Index (FWI) they projected an extension of the fire season and a strong
increase in the areal extent of extreme fire danger in both countries. Flannigan et al. (2000)
achieved similar results by using the seasonal severity rating (SSR) which is a component
of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) and describes a seasonal
average of fire danger. They predict a SRR increase of about 10 - 50% over most of North
America until the middle of the 21st century. In a recent paper Le Goff et al. (2009) suggest
interannual variations of fire activity in Quebec, e.g. moving the fire season peak later in
the season.
In Europe several investigations have also been undertaken to assess potential impacts of
climate change on fire risk. Moriondo et al. (2006) trace the increase in fire risk in the
Mediterranean area back to 3 main components: (1) increase in the number of years with
high fire risk; (2) increase in the length of the fire season; (3) increase of extreme events.
Such studies predict a rapid response of fire danger to climate warming. On the other hand
it is very hard to determine future trends of fire severity and intensity due to the complex
interactions between weather, vegetation and human activities.
In this study we simulate future fire risk in a very complex topography in the south of
Germany. Due to the fact that GCMs have a rather coarse spatial resolution (> 100 km) we
are using the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (http://www.cosmo-model.org) for our
analysis. The high horizontal resolution of 0.165 (~18 km) enables a more realistic
simulation of fine scale atmospheric features. In a subsequent step we are planning to run
the model with an even higher resolution (~10 km) and to apply additional statistical
downscaling on the simulations to achieve better results in mountainous areas.
In this paper we use the COSMO-CLM output as input for the Canadian Forest Fire Danger
Rating System (CFFDRS). The aim is to assess possible changes in fire risk (number of
days with fire risk, change of moisture content, seasonal averaged fire risk) in southern
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Germany. The analysis is conducted with the assumption that future vegetation will have
similar fuel characteristics to the present situation.

2. Data and Methodology

2.1. Regional Climate Model

The COSMO model (formerly known as LM) is a nonhydrostatic limited atmospheric

prediction model developed by the DWD (German Weather Service). The model equations
are formulated in rotated geographical coordinates and a generalized terrain following
height coordinate. A variety of physical processes are taken into account by
parameterization schemes. The COSMO model can be run in numerical weather prediction
mode (NWP-mode) or in climate mode (CLM-mode).

Fig. 1: Altitude above sea level [m] in the model topography. The solid box indicates
the investigation area of future fire danger analysis in section 3.2.

The climate mode simulations presented in this study have a spatial resolution of 0.165
latitude x 0.165 longitude and cover an area of 770 km x 660 km centred over the Alps
(Fig. 1; Lautenschlager, 2009). The COSMO-CLM model takes boundary conditions from
the global model ECHAM5/MPIOM (Roeckner et al., 2003) with a data exchange interval
of 6 hours. ECHAM5 is a coupled ocean-atmosphere model with a horizontal mesh size of
about 200 km and was developed by the Max-Planck-Institute in Hamburg, Germany. The
calculation of future climate is based on the A1B-scenario which describes a possible future
world of very rapid economic growth, global population peaking in mid-century and rapid
introduction of new and more efficient technologies with a balance across all energy
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sources (IPCC, 2007). The coupled simulations have no feedback from the regional model
to the global scale.
The numerical simulations presented here cover a time period between 2001 and 2050. For
a comparison with recent climate we use the output of the COSMO- 20th century
simulations from the DKRZ (Deutsches Klima Rechenzentrum; Lautenschlager, 2005).
These simulations are driven with observed anthropogenic forcing and comprise the years
between 1961 and 2000. Data output of the regional climate model contain all essential
meteorological variables with a temporal resolution of 3 hours.
For the climatological part in section 3.1 we consider the whole alpine area from 44 to
50N and 5 to 14E (Fig. 1). In the analysis part regarding future forest fire danger in
section 3.2 we focus on southern Germany (black box in Fig. 1). Here we restrict the
analysis to an area between the Austrian Alps in the South, the River Main in the North, the
border to France in the West and the border to Austria/Czech Republic in the East. Most of
this region belongs to the federal state of Bavaria, but on the western side also large parts of
Baden-Wrttemberg are included. The model topography comprises altitudes from 150 m
in the north-western corner to 2300 m in the Alps in the south.

2.2. Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System

The Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (Van Wagner, 1987) is meteorologically
based and tries to express the combined effects of air temperature, relative humidity, wind
speed and precipitation on fire danger. It consists of 6 standard components each
representing a different aspect of fire danger. The Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC), the
Duff Moisture Code (DMC) and the Drought Code (DC) simulate daily changes in
moisture contents of three fuel classes. These are the surface litter (FFMC), decomposing
litter (DMC) and humus layer (DC). The other three components are related to fire
behaviour representing the rate of spread, fuel consumption and fire intensity. The Initial
Spread Index (ISI) expresses the fires rate of spread after ignition, the Buildup Index (BUI)
describes the total amount of fuel available for consumption and the Fire Weather Index
(FWI) is a numerical rating of fire intensity. It can be considered as a combination of ISI
and BUI and is used to estimate the difficulty of fire control. The FWI is a daily index
which depends on the meteorological parameters taken each day at noon (12 UTC). It was
developed for Canadian forests but it is now used worldwide to estimate fire danger in a
generalized fuel type. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) also uses this index to produce fire
risk maps at the European Union level (http://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu).
The FWI is based on a standard pine litter fuel type, but there are some methods to adapt it
to different forest vegetation (Wotton, 2008; Wotton and Beverly, 2007). In this paper we
do not use any adaptation of the index to Alpine forest vegetation.
For climatological purposes the Canadian system offers the possibility to calculate a
Seasonal Severity Rating (SSR) which can be considered as a seasonal averaged fire
danger. It is calculated by simple averaging of the Daily Severity Rating (DSR) over a
whole fire season. The DSR is a function of the FWI and is specifically designed for
averaging, either temporally or spatially (Van Wagner, 1987). The effect of using DSR for
averaging is to weight the large FWI values to reflect control difficulty in more direct
proportion.

3. Results and Discussion

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3.1. Climate change in the Alps

Fig. 2: Temperature (a, in C) and precipitation differences (b, relative units) between
the control (1991-2000) and the scenario period (2041-2050).

Before starting the detailed analysis of forest fire risk in southern Germany we briefly
describe simulated climate trends in the Alpine region. Fig. 2 displays temperature and
precipitation trends based on simulations with the regional model COSMO CLM. The
results refer to a comparison of ten years in the future (2041 2050, hereafter scenario
period) with a past decade (1991 2000, hereafter control period). The left panel shows the
absolute temperature change in C between control and scenario periods. The largest
temperature increase is expected along the Alps with maximum values of more than +1.5C
in the Italian part. Other mountain ranges (e.g. Apennine) also exhibit a much higher
warming than the surrounding lowlands (feedback mechanisms). Generally, the model
shows a more pronounced temperature rise in the southern parts than north of the Alps.
Whereas the model simulates a mean temperature rise in northern Italy of about 1.2 1.3C
between the control and the scenario periods, warming in large parts of Bavaria is relatively
low at 0.6 0.8C. Some changes in temperature patterns can be associated with a change
in atmospheric circulation. This becomes evident by looking at seasonal temperature trends
(not shown). An increasing frequency of westerly flow in winter, caused by a large increase
in the north-south pressure gradient, is accompanied by a strong warming north of the Alps
in the meteorological winter (December February). In contrast, warming in the
Mediterranean area is likely to be largest in summer (June August) due to weak pressure
differences in these regions during summer.
Another south-north contrast is indicated by precipitation changes in Fig. 2b. Precipitation
is predicted to increase in large parts of Germany and the western Alps in Switzerland (+ 5
to + 15%). In contrast to this, predictions in the southern Alps and the Mediterranean
regions result in a strong decrease (- 20%) of mean annual precipitation by the middle of
the 21st century. Circulation changes appear to also affect the seasonal cycle of
precipitation in the Alps. Increases in winter precipitation result from increased westerly
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winds from the Atlantic Ocean. On the other side decreases in summer precipitation are
largely due to more easterly and anticyclonic flow situations. The decrease in precipitation
together with enhanced evaporation in summer is very likely to enhance forest fire danger
in Mediterranean regions in the future. Fig. 2b shows that changes in precipitation may vary
substantially on relatively small horizontal scales, particularly in areas of complex
topography such as the Alps.
A close-up view on climate change impacts in the research area of southern Germany
reveals a simulated temperature rise in the mountainous areas of between 1C and 1.3C.
Lowest warming is expected in the northwest with values between 0.6C and 0.8C.
Precipitation change till 2050 seems to be the inverse of temperature patterns. The strongest
preciptiation enhancement simulated by the COSMO model occur in the north with an
increase between 10% and 15%. In contrast, mean annual precipitation in the Austrian Alps
is not predicted to change distinctively.
At the end of this section it is has to be stressed that the presented findings are based on a
single numerical model. Climate models are limited by the time taken to make calculations
and therefore each model contains certain assumptions about different physical processes.
The use of another regional climate model might result in different temperature and
precipitation patterns (IPCC, 2007).

3.2. Simulation of future fire danger in southern Germany

With the output of the model simulations it is now possible to calculate the Canadian Fire
Weather Index (FWI) at each grid point and for all days in the control/scenario period. One
possibility to assess fire danger is to look at the number of days when the index exceeds a
certain threshold. In the literature, different thresholds for fire danger classes are used, e.g.
Rainha and Fernandes (2002) identify high fire danger in Portugal with a FWI higher than
16.5, in Canada a threshold of 9 is common for danger class 3 high (Van Wagner, 1987).

Fig. 3: a) Mean annual number of days with FWI > 10 in the control period (1991-
2000). b) Absolute difference between the number of days with FWI > 10 in the
control and the scenario period (2041-2050).
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The European Forest Fire Research Centre (EFFIS) refers to a high fire danger when the
FWI is greater than 10 (http://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu). Hence we decided to adopt 10 as a
threshold for days with an elevated fire danger in southern Germany.
Fig. 3a displays the geographical distribution of the number of days with a FWI > 10. The
values refer to mean annual days, averaged over ten years in the control period (1991-
2000). Hot spots appear in the northwest of the area where the FWI is higher than 10 on
average for 60 80 days. In central Bavaria and in the Rhine valley north of the Swiss
border an elevated fire danger class occurs for more than 40 days/year. One problem that
appears in this figure are the low FWI values in elevated regions (topography in Fig. 1). In
the Alps for example the FWI only scarcely (5 10 times per year) exceeds the threshold
and even in low mountain ranges (Black Forest, Bavarian Forest) the number of days is not
much higher. One possible reason for this fact is the strong temperature dependence of the
Canadian fire index. As mentioned before, altitude of the grid points in the south sometimes
exceeds 2000 m (Fig. 1). Hence the temperatures are generally very low and accordingly
the FWI is also low in such regions. One possibility to avoid this would be to run the model
with a higher resolution (< 10 km) or to use statistical downscaling methods. Hence the
valleys would be better resolved and the resulting indices would be much more consistent
with reality. Nevertheless we will discuss the future trend of the forest fire index.
Fig. 3b displays absolute differences between the number of days in the control and the
scenario period. Positive values indicate areas with an increasing number of days in the
simulation. Over most parts of southern Germany the fire risk seems to decrease, indicated
by the green and blue colours in the figure. In the northwestern part values of about -15
days/year appear which suggests a decrease of possible fire days of more than 20%. One
plausible reason for this fact are predicted changes in the precipipitation patterns. As
mentioned in section 3.1 the model simulates an increase in total precipitation and also an
increasing number of days with precipitation in large areas north of the Alps. This is
associated with more frequent westerly winds in the scenario climate compared to the
current situation. As a consequence of more rainy days the FWI is reduced in such regions
and the number of days beyond the threshold of 10 decreases. In contrast, no changes or a
slightly increasing frequency of days with an elevated fire danger is simulated south of
Munich near the Alps. But this trend is not so statistically significant because the absolute
numbers are very low in this area (Fig. 3a)
To reduce the dependence of the index on temperature or altitude respectively, we decided
to make a similar analysis with the moisture content (MC). Moisture content can be derived
from the Canadian Fine Fuel Moisture Content (FFMC) by using the following standard
conversion (Van Wagner, 1987).

101 FFMC
MC = 147 .27
59 .9 + FFMC

Hence low MC values denote dry conditions with high fire danger. If the moisture content
is higher than 25 ignition is not very likely (Wittich, 2005). So we took this threshold into
our analysis and compared the number of days with MC < 25 in the control period with the
scenario run. Fig. 4a displays the mean annual number of days with MC < 25 in the decade
1991-2000.
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Fig. 4: a) Mean annual number of days with MC < 25 in the control period (1991-
2000). b) Absolute difference between the number of days with MC < 25 in the control
and the scenario period (2041-2050).

The patterns are quite similar to Fig. 3a despite much higher absolute values in the MC
plot. Maxima can be found in the northwest (Rhine valley) and in the centre of the study
area (along the Danube) with more than 120 days/year. Days with a moisture content below
25% do not often occur in the Alps. This can be explained by the high precipitation in this
region due to the elevated topography (orographic precipitation enhancement). In contrast
to the FWI the MC reacts very fast to precipitation. Hence, a short dry spell is sufficient to
lower the moisture content considerably, whereas the FWI would not indicate any change at
all. Looking at the future MC distribution in Fig. 4b the results of the FWI analysis are
confirmed. Yellow and red colours indicate an increase, green and blue colours a decrease
of days. For large parts of Bavaria and Baden-Wrttemberg a decreasing number of days
with possible fire danger is predicted. The strongest decrease appears in the Bavarian Forest
(northeastern corner of the area), where the values are sometimes below -15 days/year. This
can be considered as an effect of strongly increasing precipitation in this region (Fig. 2b).
Only in the Alps does climate change seem to result in a slightly elevated mean fire risk
(low statistical significance).
The results of the two presented methods are more or less the same. Both indicate future
fire trends with respect to the number of days with possible fire danger. To assess fire
weather from season to season we need to apply another method. Simple averaging of the
FWI or MC values is not considered suitable, because of the nonlinearity in the Canadian
fire rating system. To get information about an averaged fire danger it is necessary to
calculate the Daily Severity Rating (DSR). It can be computed directly from the FWI by the
following equation (Van Wagner, 1987):

DSR = 0. 0272 * FWI 1 . 77

DSR weights high FWI values more and is therefore adequate for averaging. To get an
objective measure of fire weather for a whole season DSR can be averaged arithmetically
which produces the Seasonal Severity Rating (SSR). As the period for averaging we use the
typical fire season in southern Germany (April to September), since this period accounts for
more than 85 % of the annual burnt area (Lachmann, 2008). After this procedure we get
one SSR value for each grid point in the respective domain. The higher the SSR the greater
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likelihood of increased fire activity. Averaging SSR over the ten years in the control period
provides Fig. 5a.

Fig. 5: a) Mean annual SSR in the control period (1991-2000). b) Relative change of
SSR between the control and scenario period (2041-2050). Positive values denote an
increase of SSR in future and negative values a decrease, respectively.

The highest seasonal averaged fire danger can be found in the northwestern edge of the area
under investigation. Here SSR is sometimes higher than 3 while reaching up to 5. To put
such SSR values in a wider context, we make a comparison to regions with a considerably
higher potential for forest fires. In Mediterranean areas SSR can rise to 8 or 9 (Moriondo et
al., 2006) and even in Canada (Stocks et al., 1998) absolute maxima are below 10. In
general SSR values above 7 represent extreme fire behaviour potential, values between 3
and 7 represent high, values between 1 and 3 moderate potential and regions with an SSR
below 1 equate to low fire potential. Using these danger classes we can summarize that
some parts in the northwest show moderate fire potential or can even be categorized into
the high fire potential class. On the other hand most parts of southern Bavaria and the
northeast of our investigation area (Bavarian Forest) show low fire potential, denoted by
dark blue colours in Fig. 5a. This is because of high annual precipitation in combination
with many rainy days and rather low temperatures due to elevated topography.
To assess future fire danger the spatial SSR distribution in the control period is compared to
the situation in the scenario period. Fig. 5b shows the ratio of the mean SSR for the
scenario period to that of the present day. Note that the 1.0 contour (transition from dark
blue to light blue) indicates no change while areas above 1.0 suggest an increase in the SSR
and areas below 1.0 a decrease of SSR, respectively. A general decrease of fire potential is
simulated for regions north of Munich (48.5N) and also in the west, while the trend in the
south indicates an increase of fire danger. The values north of this line are relatively
homogeneous (between 0.6 and 0.9). This means a decrease of averaged SSR of between 10
and 40% compared to the present situation. Near the Alps the model simulates an increase
of mean SSR until the scenario period of 40 50%, even reaching values of more than
200% in the northern Alps near the border with Austria. But relative SSR change values
have to be taken with great care, as relatively small changes in SSR have a strong impact on
the relative SSR change because of very low absolute values. However the bottom line of
this SSR analysis is more or less similar to the other methods presented in this paper.
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4. Conlusions and Outlook

This paper examined future forest fire danger in southern Germany based on climate
simulations with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM. The Canadian Fire Weather
Index (FWI) was calculated daily within a control (19912000) and a scenario period
(2041-2050). In the complex topography of southern Germany we evaluated trends in order
to see if the model produces different climate change impacts in geographic distribution or
in mean severity.
The model predicts a general decrease of fire danger in large parts of the investigation area
due to increasing precipitation. The number of days with fire danger is expected to decrease
as well as the seasonal averaged fire severity. In contrast, in some regions in the Alps fire
danger is simulated to increase slightly. Our analysis revealed some problems of the
Canadian system in elevated regions where the fire danger index is always very low (due to
low temperatures).
As a next step we are planning to test other indices for their ability to assess fire danger in
complex terrain. Further issues in this context would be an analysis of seasonal pattern
changes and an investigation of the fire season length in future.
In a small pilot area in Bavaria simulations with an even higher horizontal resolution (< 10
km) will be run to reduce the error of smoothed topography. Additionally, different
statistical downscaling methods will also be tested in this region.

5. Acknowledgements

This work is financed by the European Union through the Alpine Space project ALP FFIRS
(Alpine Forest Fire Warning System, project no. 15-2-3-IT). The authors would like to
thank the Climate-limited-area-Modelling-Community and the DKRZ (Deutsches
Klimarechenzentrum) for providing the climate simulations with the COSMO model.

6. References

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The Science of the Total Environment 262: 221-229

IPCC, 2007: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Fourth Assessment Report.

http://www.ipcc.ch

Lachmann, M., 2008: Waldbrandstatistik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland fr das Jahr

2008. Bundesanstalt fr Landwirtschaft und Ernhrung

Lautenschlager, M. et al., 2005: Climate Simulation with CLM, Climate of the 20th
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Lautenschlager, M. et al., 2009: Climate Simulation with CLM, Scenario A1B run no.2,
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Wittich, K.-P., 2005: A single-layer litter-moisture model for estimating forest-fire danger.
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Wotton, B.M., 2008: Interpeting and using outputs from the Canadian Forest Fire Danger
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