@article{5c7428cf5e584fc686d832087c95b3e4,
title = "Emerging anthropogenic influences on the southcentral alaska temperature and precipitation extremes and related fires in 2019",
abstract = "The late-season extreme fire activity in Southcentral Alaska during 2019 was highly unusual and consequential. Firefighting operations had to be extended by a month in 2019 due to the extreme conditions of hot summer temperature and prolonged drought. The ongoing fires created poor air quality in the region containing most of Alaska{\textquoteright}s population, leading to substantial impacts to public health. Suppression costs totaled over $70 million for Southcentral Alaska. This study{\textquoteright}s main goals are to place the 2019 season into historical context, provide an attribution analysis, and assess future changes in wildfire risk in the region. The primary tools are meteorological observations and climate model simulations from the NCAR CESM Large Ensemble (LENS). The 2019 fire season in Southcentral Alaska included the hottest and driest June–August season over the 1979–2019 period. The LENS simulation analysis suggests that the anthropogenic signal of increased fire risk had not yet emerged in 2019 because of the CESM{\textquoteright}s internal variability, but that the anthropogenic signal will emerge by the 2040–2080 period. The effect of warming temperatures dominates the effect of enhanced precipitation in the trend towards increased fire risk.",
keywords = "Boreal forest, Buildup Index, Climate change, Drought, LENS, PM2.5, Precipitation, RCP 8.5, SPEI, Temperature, Wildland fire",
author = "Bhatt, {Uma S.} and Lader, {Rick T.} and Walsh, {John E.} and Bieniek, {Peter A.} and Richard Thoman and Matthew Berman and Cecilia Borries-Strigle and Kristi Bulock and Jonathan Chriest and Micah Hahn and Hendricks, {Amy S.} and Randi Jandt and Joseph Little and Daniel McEvoy and Chris Moore and Rupp, {T. Scott} and Jennifer Schmidt and Eric Stevens and Heidi Strader and Christine Waigl and James White and Alison York and Robert Ziel",
note = "Funding Information: Funding: The National Science Foundation (#OIA-1753748), the State of Alaska, the United States Geological Survey (G17AC00363), and the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center (G17AC00213) provided support for this study. NOAA supported this work through grants #NA16OAR4310162 (R.T., J.E.W., A.Y.) and #NA16OAR4310142 (U.S.B., P.A.B.). Funding Information: The National Science Foundation (#OIA-1753748), the State of Alaska, the United States Geological Survey (G17AC00363), and the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center (G17AC00213) provided support for this study. NOAA supported this work through grants #NA16OAR4310162 (R.T., J.E.W., A.Y.) and #NA16OAR4310142 (U.S.B., P.A.B.). We thank Grace Kuiper for air quality data analysis. We thank Piyush Jain for the ERA5 BUI data. We thank Vanessa Raymond for her assistance in archiving our processed data. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments that helped to improve this manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.",
year = "2021",
month = jan,
doi = "10.3390/land10010082",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "10",
pages = "1--15",
journal = "Land",
issn = "2073-445X",
publisher = "Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)",
number = "1",
}