Wildfire FWI

General description

Climate change is a key driver of increasing wildfire risk across the globe, influencing the frequency, intensity, and duration of fire-conducive conditions. Rising temperatures, prolonged dry periods, and changes in precipitation patterns create hot and dry environments that favour the ignition and spread of wildfires. These changes are leading to longer fire seasons and more frequent extreme fire weather events, even in regions that historically experienced low wildfire activity. Understanding how climate affects these conditions is therefore essential for assessing future wildfire risk. The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) provides a widely applied framework for assessing how weather conditions influence the likelihood and intensity of wildfires. The FWI is based solely on atmospheric variables—temperature, humidity, wind, and precipitation—and reflects the dryness of fuels and the ease with which fires can start and spread under hot and dry conditions. As such, it provides a consistent framework to analyse changes in climate-driven fire danger across regions and over time, from present-day conditions to future climate scenarios. Originally developed for Canadian forests, the FWI system is now applied globally in climate studies and operational services. Its detailed scientific formulation is described in Van Wagner (1987), while the adaptations used in this work for global climate applications are documented in the technical description.

The data is available with the identifier EO.FMI.DAT.DESTINE_CLIMATE_WILDFIRE_FWI on the DestinE Data Lake.

Methods

The technical description summarises the calculation of the FWI and its adaptation for the global domain.

The FWI system was originally developed for Canadian boreal and temperate forests, with its detailed scientific implementation described in [Van Wagner, 1987].

Data portfolio

The FWI data are provided as gridded NetCDF files with latitude, longitude, and time coordinates, along with domain-averaged daily FWI time series available as NetCDF files without spatial coordinates. The data are provided as daily FWI files, together with annual statistics comprising fire danger threshold exceedances, percentiles (50th, 95th, and 99th), and domain-averaged daily values.

Accessing the data

Note

Data for this application will become available on the DestinE Data Lake in a forthcoming update.

Scientific Evaluation

Note

Scientific evaluation for this application will be available in a forthcoming update.