Fire Research » Fire & Climate Change

Historical Fire Weather in Canada: 1953–1996

Overview

In collaboration with researchers from the Atmospheric Environment Service of Environment Canada, hourly weather records have been obtained for a large number of weather stations from across Canada from 1953 onward. These data have been reduced to create a data set of noon screen level temperature and relative humidity, 10-meter wind speed, and 24-hour accumulated rainfall. This data set has been used within the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) to generate a series of daily codes and indices describing daily levels of fuel moisture and potential fire activity. This weather archive is currently being used to look for historic trends in fire danger levels, develop relations between area burned (from the Large Fire Database) and fire danger levels in Canada, and validate scenarios of current weather from the Global Circulation Models and Regional Climate Model.

From these data, a Canadian Forest Fire Danger Atlas will be developed by the Fire Management Systems group at the Canadian Forest Service Northern Forestry Centre in Edmonton. It is envisioned that this atlas will contain a large series of maps of fire weather and fire danger indices, summarized as annual and decadal means, showing annual ranges and extreme values.

Seasonal Severity Rating Map Simulation