Incorporating observed fire severity in refined emissions  estimates for boreal and temperate forest fires  in the carbon budget model CBM-CFS3 v1.2

Thompson, Dan K.; Whitman, Ellen; Hafer, Mark; Hararuk, Oleksandra; Hanes, Chelene; Manvailer Goncalves, Vinicius; Hudson, Ben

doi:10.5194/gmd-19-3617-2026

Articles | Volume 19, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-3617-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-3617-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 9

Model description paper

|

05 May 2026

Model description paper |

| 05 May 2026

Incorporating observed fire severity in refined emissions estimates for boreal and temperate forest fires in the carbon budget model CBM-CFS3 v1.2

Dan K. Thompson, Ellen Whitman, Mark Hafer, Oleksandra Hararuk, Chelene Hanes, Vinicius Manvailer Goncalves, and Ben Hudson

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-3617-2026-supplement

Data sets

RMarkdown source code and data inputs to FireDMs Dan K. Thompson and Ellen Whitman https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17517166

Model code and software

RMarkdown source code and data inputs to FireDMs Dan K. Thompson and Ellen Whitman https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17517166

Interactive computing environment

RMarkdown source code and data inputs to FireDMs Dan K. Thompson and Ellen Whitman https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17517166

Short summary

Emissions from fires are tallied in Canada's National Forest Carbon Monitoring Accounting and Reporting System. Mapped fire extents and regional carbon stock estimates are used, but a fixed and high fire severity is assumed. This paper improves on existing methods by calculating fire emissions based on mapped fire severity. This new method compares well against independent measurements for the 2023 fires in Canada.