Fire weather and fuel moisture controls on wildfire activity - present and future.

平均每年有7000起野火烧毁约250万公顷（约为新斯科舍省面积的一半）。加拿大消防管理机构花费8亿美元保护社区和经济利益，包括我们的森林。火灾管理是森林管理的一个重要方面。目前，加拿大消防管理机构使用加拿大森林火灾危险等级系统（CFFDRS）来确定荒地火灾危险。CFFDRS系统的一个关键组成部分是火灾天气指数（FWI）系统，该系统每天观测气温、24小时降水、相对湿度和风速，以得出细燃料、灰层和深层有机物质的燃料水分。燃料湿度是决定火灾是否会点燃和蔓延以及火灾强度的最重要因素。

On average, 7,000 wildland fires burn about 2.5 million ha (about half the size of Nova Scotia) every year. Canadian fire management agencies spend $800 million protecting communities and economic interests including our forests. Fire management is a major aspect of forest management. Currently, Canadian fire management agencies use the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) to determine wildland fire danger. A key component of the CFFDRS system is the Fire Weather Index (FWI) System that takes daily observations of air temperature, 24 hour precipitation, relative humidity and wind speed to derive the fuel moisture of fine fuels, the duff layer as well as deeper organic material. Fuel moisture is the most important factor that determines if a fire will ignite and spread and how intense the fire will be. My long-term objectives are to continue to explore the relationships between weather, vegetation(fuel) and wildfire. In the short term, I am proposing to address four objectives related to my long-term objective. The first objective will use machine learning/artificial intelligence to identify and forecast severe fire weather episodes over western Canada. The second objective will address global changes in fuel moisture until the end of this century using multiple global climate models and multiple climate change scenarios. In particular, exceedances of key threshold fuel moisture values that determine ignition and active spread will be examined. The third objective will determine if there is a trend towards more high intensity fires during the night using infrared satellite data. The fourth objective will model how climate-change altered diurnal temperature and associated relative humidity changes will modify fuel moisture and how this will affect fire behaviour in the future. All these studies will contribute to enhance fire management today and in the future to better protect Canadians and their interests.