Status: Finalised Material from: Tim, Mark P., Francesca
1. Impact
A tragedy involving over 60 fatalities unfolded on 17 June as a result of a severe forest fire outbreak in Central Portugal.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40316934
2. Description of the event
On a global scale the fire radiative power output from this event is striking, and unparalleled at that time, it seems, in the rest of the world (bright yellow spot in the plot below).
"Fire radiative activity" dated 18 June from CAMS web site (left), Fire power in historical context, for Portugal (middle) and 850mb temp and 500mb height for 12Z Sat (right).
Several factors contribute to fire risk, notably conducive weather (hot, dry, windy), and conducive conditions of the land surface (dry state, low soil moisture, material to burn). Additionally in this case there is the complication that lightning, from a 'dry thunderstorm' may have ignited the fires. During the week before the fires a heatwave affected the Iberian peninsula, and Cordoba, in Spain, may have recorded the highest ever temperature in Spain in June (44.5C) on 16 June.
The plot below shows the soil moisture anomaly in the top 3 soil levels in the model. A dry anomaly was present over the Iberian peninsula.
3. Predictability
3.1 Data assimilation
3.2 HRES
3.3 ENS
3.4 Monthly forecasts
The plot below shows the verification of 2-metre temperature anomalies for the week of 19-26 June from the monthly forecasts. Already the forecast from 4 weeks before the event had a warm anomaly for western Europe.
3.5 Comparison with other centres
3.6 Fire forecast products
The plot below shows a sequence of EFFIS fire weather index maps from day 10 down to day 1, which show clearly large areas of high risk throughout Iberia, except the far N. The most extreme shade denotes conditions that should have a probability of occurrence, in summer in general, of order only 2%.
