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A fiery wake-up call for climate science

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 175–177 (2020)Cite this article

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To improve climate resilience for extreme fire events, researchers need to translate modelling uncertainties into useful guidance and be wary of overconfidence. If Earth system models do not capture the severity of recent Australian wildfires, development is urgently needed to assess whether we are underestimating fire risk.

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Fig. 1: Observed and projection of historical and future climate in New South Wales, Australia.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output, with specific contributions from MPI32, CNRM33, ECMWF34 and NCAR35. B.M.S. is supported by the French National Research Agency, ANR-17-MPGA-0016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CERFACS, Toulouse, France

    Benjamin M. Sanderson & Rosie A. Fisher

  2. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA

    Benjamin M. Sanderson

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  1. Benjamin M. Sanderson
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  2. Rosie A. Fisher
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin M. Sanderson.

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Sanderson, B.M., Fisher, R.A. A fiery wake-up call for climate science. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 175–177 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0707-2

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