ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATIC FACTORS OF FOREST FIRE HAZARD RISKS FOR STUDY AREAS IN THE VORONEZH AND KALUGA REGIONS IN THE 2022 FIRE SEASON

Abstract

Forest fires are considered to be an element of the global development of the biosphere, a factor that should be taken into account when analyzing climate change and choosing actions to mitigate its negative consequences. The paper provides an assessment of climate-associated fire hazard risks in the 2022 season for the study areas located in the Voronezh and Kaluga regions. The source material for the study were average daily and specific-term observations of the Voronezh and Sukhinichi weather stations, representative for these areas, for the fire season from April to October 2022 as well as their long-term average monthly data obtained for the 56-year period 1966–2021. The methodological approach is based on calculations of the values of monthly normalized anomalies for five factors (air temperature, amount of precipitation, relative air humidity, wind speed, and the number of thunderstorms) and their subsequent comparative climatic analysis with the data from 2022. The results of the analysis made it possible to provide a clear quantitative description of the structure of the climate-associated fire hazard risks development for each month of the 2022 season according to these meteorological parameters relative to long-term climatic conditions. An additionaltransition from normalized anomalies to a score-based risk assessment provided the possibility to obtain approximate integral estimates of climate-associated risks for a complex of all the five factors simultaneously, for each month and the entire fire season for both study areas. The findings presented in the article are likely to be of interest to specialists in forestry, applied climatology, students majoring in disciplines related to the study of forests, forestry, and forest industry, and may also benefit a wide range of specialists in geographical, biological, ecological, and environmental fields.