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A. Bartsch, H. Balzter, C. George:
"Siberian forest fires and soil moisture anomalies observed with C-band scatterometer";
Poster: 2009 AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, California, USA; 2009-12-14 - 2009-12-18.

Forest fires are frequent in the Siberian taiga and are predicted to increase in frequency as a result of increased fire risk under drought conditions caused by climate change. There is, however, some uncertainty as to the extent to which drought influences forest fire frequency. Both, forest fires and drought conditions can be observed with satellite data. Here, we present an analyses of satellite-derived soil moisture anomaly data (ERS-1/2 scatterometer) and burned area maps (AVHRR/ATSR) over central Siberia for the years 1992-2000. Monthly mean soil moisture deviations were compared to the number of fire scars and the burned area. Results show that above average surface soil moisture conditions limit the possible burned area. The magnitude of a negative deviation does not determine the maximum size of by fire affected areas. More than 50% of area is burned under below average surface soil moisture condition in July and 80% in August.