Jiafu Mao from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and co-authors in 2021 examined the interannual variability in global burned area using satellite-derived wildfire products and the outputs of the E3SM Land Model v1. The investigation included multiple aspects of the interannual variability, i.e.
(1) the spatial and temporal structures during 1997-2018
(2) contributions from individual biomes
(3) covariations with climate factors
(4) comparison between the ELM and several remote sensing wildfire products.
The data sources of the observations were
(1) The Global Fire Emission Database (GFED): 1997-2016, 0.25 degrees, monthly burned area. This product is derived from several satellite sources (TRMM, ATSR, MODIS).
(2) The FireCCI5.1 burned area: 2001-present, 250m, MODIS image.
Main findings
(1) The highest observed interannual variability is in the boreal area and semi-arid regions, and the lowest in tropical and subtropical regions - especially the African subtropical savannah systems.
(2) The ELM simulations underestimated the interannual variability's magnitudes in the boreal area, and overestimated the variability's magnitudes over Africa. The highest interannual variability in ELM-simulated burned area is still in the boreal forests, but the lowest is in the temperate grassland and shrubland.
(3) The GFED and ELM simulations both showed that the burned area interannual variability were positively correlated with temperature and shortwave radiation, but negative with precipitation. The only disagreement was in North Australia, where GFED had negative correlations with temperature, but ELM had positive.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674927821000903
