Question: Hi Tom , I would like to know how/if you can record a wildfire before it is going to happen ? :D

Thomas Smith answered on 16 Jun 2014:

Hey 😀

This is something that I was working on last week with some Spanish scientists who are also interested in trying to predict when a wildfire might happen. There are a few things that control when and where a wildfire might happen, and these can be used to try to predict wildfires:

Weather – this is really important, for a wildfire you need a long period of dry weather, this leads to vegetation drying out, and when the vegetation is dry it can be fuel for a fire. When the humidity in the air is low, and it hasn’t rained for a few days, the risk of fire goes up. The risk of a bad fire increases with windy conditions, as this can help spread the fire. Weather forecasting is the best tool we have for predicting wildfires, and the Met Office (the people who forecast the weather) actually have a map of “fire severity” on their website here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/fire-severity-index/#?tab=map&fcTime=1402948800&zoom=5&lon=-4.00&lat=55.74

The trouble is that fires are not that simple, because as well as the weather, you also need an ignition. Generally these are very hard to predict. I am working with other scientists to try and improve predicting where ignitions might occur. Often fires are set by humans either accidentally or on purpose, so you can use things like location of roads, picnic/barbecue areas to help predict these things.