Threats of projected changes in fire regime for newly affected areas in Europe and Northern Africa

Under climate change conditions, climatic wildfire danger could also increase in ecosystems not dominated by fires until now. This increasing trend could lead to more area burned in the future. We have developed an algorithm to map new fire-prone areas in Europe and Northern Africa that identifies grid points where a rare fire event is becoming the mean at the end of the 21st century. When applying the model to simulated changes in future fire regimes it revealed that these new fire-prone areas would be found mostly in Eastern Europe. Depending on the climate scenario and vegetation-fire model used, it could also extend to central and South-Eastern Europe.