Articles | Volume 15, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-1899-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-1899-2022
Model description paper
 | 
08 Mar 2022
Model description paper |  | 08 Mar 2022

Building a machine learning surrogate model for wildfire activities within a global Earth system model

Qing Zhu, Fa Li, William J. Riley, Li Xu, Lei Zhao, Kunxiaojia Yuan, Huayi Wu, Jianya Gong, and James Randerson

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Cited articles

Abatzoglou, J. T. and Williams, A. P.: Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests, P. Natl. Acad. Sci., 113, 11770–11775, 2016. 
Andela, N., Morton, D. C., Giglio, L., Paugam, R., Chen, Y., Hantson, S., van der Werf, G. R., and Randerson, J. T.: The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed and direction, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 529–552, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-529-2019, 2019. 
Arora, V. K. and Boer, G. J.: Fire as an interactive component of dynamic vegetation models, J. Geophys. Res.-Biogeo., 110, G02008, https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JG000042, 2005. 
Bond, W. J., Woodward, F. I., and Midgley, G. F.: The global distribution of ecosystems in a world without fire, New Phytol., 165, 525–538, 2005. 
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Short summary
Wildfire is a devastating Earth system process that burns about 500 million hectares of land each year. It wipes out vegetation including trees, shrubs, and grasses and causes large losses of economic assets. However, modeling the spatial distribution and temporal changes of wildfire activities at a global scale is challenging. This study built a machine-learning-based wildfire surrogate model within an existing Earth system model and achieved high accuracy.
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