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Lookup NU author(s): Vikki Thompson, Dr Hannah BloomfieldORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
In July 2022 southeast England experienced a record breaking heatwave and unprecedented wildfires in urban areas. We investigate fire weather trends since 1960 in southeast England using a large ensemble of initialised climate models. Record smashing temperatures coincided with widespread fires in London, and we find that while wildfire risk was high, it was not record breaking. We show that between the 1960s and 2010s annual maximum daily fire weather has increased. The proportion of summertime days with high and very high fire risk has increased—while medium and low risk days have become less common. These findings show the need to mitigate against the increasing risk of wildfire caused by climate change.
Author(s): Thompson V, Mitchell D, Melia N, Bloomfield H, Dunstone N, Kay G
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Climate Resilience and Sustainability
Year: 2025
Volume: 4
Issue: 1
Print publication date: 01/06/2025
Online publication date: 09/01/2025
Acceptance date: 29/10/2024
Date deposited: 24/01/2025
ISSN (electronic): 2692-4587
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/cli2.70002
DOI: 10.1002/cli2.70002
Data Access Statement: ERA5 data was downloaded from the European Centre for MediumRange Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) at Climate Data Store (CDS; https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/). The DePreSys4 UK Met Office model data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the authors. The code used to generate the figures in this paper and the Supplementary Materials is available from GitHub: https://github.com/vikki-thompson/wildfire. All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials.
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