Fact sheets

METEOROLOGICAL  DATA ARE CRITICAL FOR COMBATING FOREST FIRES

According to the recent 4th Assessment Report of the IPCC wildland fires are likely to increase in both frequency and intensity. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of its Members provide weather and climate data that are vital for the prevention, mitigation and monitoring of such fires and continue to enhance operational weather systems for fire danger rating. WMO is developing operational guidelines for fire weather agrometeorology which will be available by 2009.

Forest fires destroy not only valuable trees but also ecosystems, agricultural crops and human communities, and disable socio-economic activities. Smoke aerosols in the atmosphere affect the amount of radiation reaching the Earth’s surface.

Meteorological data are critical to forecasting the potential for fires to get started and for their behavior once started. Given a complex of fuels in a wildland environment, the way that a fire develops and burns from an ignition source depends largely on meteorological and climatic factors. Extended periods of low precipitation, low humidity and high temperature produce conditions in which dead vegetation, and to some extent living material, becomes highly flammable. Meteorological data are also necessary to predict smoke trajectories and its dispersion.

Efforts to develop fire danger rating systems have been driven by a concern about fires burning out of control and endangering human lives and property. As countries have sought to protect public health and safety, wildland and agricultural burning have attracted increasing attention and become the target of regulatory attention. Fire’s influence on and response to the changing global climate and, on a smaller scale, fire’s effects on regional and local air quality have become international issues.

More at http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/hazards/index_en.html

WMO is the United Nations' authoritative voice on weather, climate and water
For more information please contact:
Ms Carine Richard-Van Maele, Chief, Communications and Public Affairs, WMO. Tel.: +41 (0)22 730 83 15; cpa[at]wmo.int
Ms Gaëlle Sévenier, Press Officer, Tel. +41 (0) 22 730 8417, E-mail: gsevenier[at]wmo.int

Web site: http://www.wmo.int

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