Wildfires, haze, and climate change

The future climate is expected to become hotter over the tropics with the gradual rise of global temperature by 1.5 to 2ºC due to anthropogenic emission pathways. The weather extremes will intensify and threaten the well-being of the people in the tropical areas, and one of these intensifications would be wildfire burning. Over the years, Southeast Asia, Amazon, Australia, and East Coast of the United States of America have all experienced severe wildfires burning due to the proliferation of slash-and-burn practices, bad land use management, and natural causes; however, similarly climate change has played a crucial role in intensifying these burning conditions. The emission of these biomass burning haze also contains components that exhibit climatic forcing ability to modify the surface and atmospheric heat content as well as precipitation conditions. To control these wildfires, intervention requires the fundamental understanding of the burning source and the conducive weather conditions to assist the decision-making and preventive measurement. This is the intention of this chapter. The existing capabilities of the fire prediction models based on historical and continual monitoring tools and forest fire danger rating system are detailed and assessed. The chapter also discusses the future projection of the fire condition due to the changing climate condition and its potential implication and outlook.