Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean

Correlations and cross-correlations between forest fires in the province of British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean were evaluated. British Columbia has a long Pacific Ocean coastline; given that there may be teleconnections between the province's forest fire...

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Main Authors: Wang, Yonghe, Flannigan, Mike, Anderson, Kerry
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380008005905
id ftrepec:oai:RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:221:y:2010:i:1:p:122-129
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spelling ftrepec:oai:RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:221:y:2010:i:1:p:122-129 2024-04-14T08:08:23+00:00 Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean Wang, Yonghe Flannigan, Mike Anderson, Kerry http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380008005905 unknown http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380008005905 article ftrepec 2024-03-19T10:30:21Z Correlations and cross-correlations between forest fires in the province of British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean were evaluated. British Columbia has a long Pacific Ocean coastline; given that there may be teleconnections between the province's forest fires and climate variability over the ocean, significant correlations may exist between forest fires and the sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean. Fire occurrences and areas burned through lightning-caused and human-caused fires were analyzed against individual 1°×1° grid cells of anomalies in the sea surface temperature to determine correlations for the period 1950–2006. Significant correlations (p<0.05) for vast areas of the ocean were found between occurrences of lightning-caused fires and sea surface temperature anomalies for time lags of 1 and 2 years, whereas significant correlations between occurrences of human-caused fires and sea surface temperature anomalies occurred extensively for many time lags. To support the results of this approach, correlations between fire data and the Niño 3.4, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and Arctic Oscillation indices were tested for the same period. Significant correlations were found between fire occurrences and these indices at certain time lags. Overall, fire occurrence appeared to be more extensively correlated with sea surface temperature anomalies than was area burned. These results support the hypothesis that teleconnections exist between fire activity in British Columbia and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, and the correlations suggest that linear regression models or other regression techniques may be appropriate for predicting fire severity from the sea surface temperatures of one or more previous years. Lightning-caused forest fires; Human-caused forest fires; Sea surface temperature anomaly; Cross-correlation; Spectral analysis; Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) Arctic Canada Pacific British Columbia ENVELOPE(-125.003,-125.003,54.000,54.000)
institution Open Polar
collection RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
op_collection_id ftrepec
language unknown
description Correlations and cross-correlations between forest fires in the province of British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean were evaluated. British Columbia has a long Pacific Ocean coastline; given that there may be teleconnections between the province's forest fires and climate variability over the ocean, significant correlations may exist between forest fires and the sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean. Fire occurrences and areas burned through lightning-caused and human-caused fires were analyzed against individual 1°×1° grid cells of anomalies in the sea surface temperature to determine correlations for the period 1950–2006. Significant correlations (p<0.05) for vast areas of the ocean were found between occurrences of lightning-caused fires and sea surface temperature anomalies for time lags of 1 and 2 years, whereas significant correlations between occurrences of human-caused fires and sea surface temperature anomalies occurred extensively for many time lags. To support the results of this approach, correlations between fire data and the Niño 3.4, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and Arctic Oscillation indices were tested for the same period. Significant correlations were found between fire occurrences and these indices at certain time lags. Overall, fire occurrence appeared to be more extensively correlated with sea surface temperature anomalies than was area burned. These results support the hypothesis that teleconnections exist between fire activity in British Columbia and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, and the correlations suggest that linear regression models or other regression techniques may be appropriate for predicting fire severity from the sea surface temperatures of one or more previous years. Lightning-caused forest fires; Human-caused forest fires; Sea surface temperature anomaly; Cross-correlation; Spectral analysis;
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Wang, Yonghe
Flannigan, Mike
Anderson, Kerry
spellingShingle Wang, Yonghe
Flannigan, Mike
Anderson, Kerry
Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean
author_facet Wang, Yonghe
Flannigan, Mike
Anderson, Kerry
author_sort Wang, Yonghe
title Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean
title_short Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean
title_full Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean
title_fullStr Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean
title_full_unstemmed Correlations between forest fires in British Columbia, Canada, and sea surface temperature of the Pacific Ocean
title_sort correlations between forest fires in british columbia, canada, and sea surface temperature of the pacific ocean
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380008005905
long_lat ENVELOPE(-125.003,-125.003,54.000,54.000)
geographic Arctic
Canada
Pacific
British Columbia
geographic_facet Arctic
Canada
Pacific
British Columbia
genre Arctic
genre_facet Arctic
op_relation http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380008005905
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