Deep Learning for Global Wildfire Forecasting

TL;DR

This paper introduces a global wildfire forecasting approach using deep learning segmentation models trained on a comprehensive dataset, capable of predicting burned areas up to 64 days in advance.

Contribution

It presents a new open-access global fire dataset and demonstrates a deep learning model for sub-seasonal wildfire prediction as an image segmentation task.

Findings

Successful prediction of burned areas 8, 16, 32, and 64 days ahead

Creation of a comprehensive global fire-related dataset

Demonstration of deep learning's potential for wildfire forecasting

Abstract

Climate change is expected to aggravate wildfire activity through the exacerbation of fire weather. Improving our capabilities to anticipate wildfires on a global scale is of uttermost importance for mitigating their negative effects. In this work, we create a global fire dataset and demonstrate a prototype for predicting the presence of global burned areas on a sub-seasonal scale with the use of segmentation deep learning models. Particularly, we present an open-access global analysis-ready datacube, which contains a variety of variables related to the seasonal and sub-seasonal fire drivers (climate, vegetation, oceanic indices, human-related variables), as well as the historical burned areas and wildfire emissions for 2001-2021. We train a deep learning model, which treats global wildfire forecasting as an image segmentation task and skillfully predicts the presence of burned areas 8, 16, 32 and 64 days ahead of time. Our work motivates the use of deep learning for global burned area forecasting and paves the way towards improved anticipation of global wildfire patterns.