Mike Flannigan | Lightnews

Grant Tosterud @granttosterud.bsky.social · 5d

The warmth in Albuquerque over the past four months has been remarkable and a bit alarming. Each month has ranked among the top five warmest on record. Taken together, this October through January period was nearly 3° warmer than the previous warmest period. #NMwx

Canada Wildfire 🔥 @canadawildfire.bsky.social · 17d

After 17 years, Canada Wildfire’s founding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) will be coming to an end. While the MOU is concluding, our operations will continue through spring 2026, and may extend beyond as we work to complete our current mandate responsibly.

photo credit: Ang Beaulac, RPFT

The sun sets over the boreal forest with firefighters crossing a field.

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · 18d

New paper in Global Ecology & Biogeography on the fire‐fuel feedback effect in Canadian forests. By 2100, under extreme climate change scenarios, fire-fuel feedback could reduce annual area burned, # of fires & annual max fire size by 21%, 21% & 16%, respectively.
Open access link: lnkd.in/gU9WUuDH

Overall fire activity shifts and fire-fuel feedback effects under changing climates. (A) Shift ratios of annual area burned (AAB), annual number of fires (ANF) and annual maximum fire size (MFS) projected by static models and dynamic models with different forms of fire-fuel feedback across the country. (B) Percentage reductions (%, i.e., fire-fuel feedback effect size) of AAB, ANF and MFS projected by dynamic models relative to that of the static models. The results showed the weighted average over the 10 ecozones where the weights were calculated by the median observed AAB, ANF and MFS for the baseline period (1981–2010).

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 22d

At least 16 people have died as ferocious wildfires gripped Southern Chile, burning homes and thousands of hectares of land, the authorities said Sunday.

Chile Wildfires Kill 16 and Force Wide Evacuation

One mayor pleaded with the national government for help as flames destroyed entire neighborhoods in the southern region of Biobío.

nyti.ms

Mark Parrington @mparrington.bsky.social · 25d

Fires on the Rise in the Far North with input from @jmccartygeo.bsky.social and the @arcticcouncil.bsky.social AMAP Arctic Climate Update Report published last year science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-... @mikeflannigan.bsky.social @queenofpeat.bsky.social @morganahcrowley.bsky.social @gwandaii.bsky.social

Fires on the Rise in the Far North - NASA Science

Satellite-based maps show northern wildland fires becoming more frequent and widespread as temperatures rise and lightning reaches higher latitudes.

science.nasa.gov

Rick Giles @richard-j-giles.bsky.social · 29d

I like @tyolsen.bsky.social and would recommend him as someone well worth the follow. Even if I subtly disagree with this article (and he's not following me back like he did on twitter).

We've entered a new era, no doubt, but...

thetyee.ca/News/2025/08...

BC’s Coastal Fires Have Entered a New Era | The Tyee

The Mount Underwood blaze confirms it. Here’s why, and what you can do.

thetyee.ca

BC Wildfire Weekly - Wildfires + More @bcwildfirewkly.bsky.social · Jan 7

KAMLOOPS: “Mike Flannigan, Thompson Rivers University wildfire expert and research chair, said B.C. and the rest of the country is “overdue for a quiet year” after three consecutive busy fire seasons.” www.castanetkamloops.net/news/Kamloop... - @castanetkamloops.net

#BCWildfire #Kamloops #Wildfires

Wildfire expert says quiet B.C. wildfire season 'overdue' after unprecedented string of busy years

After three busy wildfire seasons in B.C., a Kamloops-based wildfire expert says a quieter year is long overdue — but it's still up in the air how the season will play out.

www.castanetkamloops.net

Canadian Journal of Forest Research @canjforestres.bsky.social · Jan 7

⭐ EDITOR'S CHOICE

Fire regime changes in Canada: an update
Hanes et al., including Mike Flannigan https://ow.ly/BZou50XT3bl #OpenAccess

This work interrogates new data building on analyses originally presented in Hanes et al. 2019 https://ow.ly/n9zQ50XT3aM

Kerryn Little @littlekerryn.bsky.social · Jan 6

📄 Little et al. (2026) – International Journal of Wildland Fire
“Relationships between synoptic weather patterns, surface fire weather and vegetation fire in a temperate region”
🔗 doi.org/10.1071/WF25...
@mikeflannigan.bsky.social @jamespope10.bsky.social @ijwildlandfire.bsky.social

Relationships between synoptic weather patterns, surface fire weather and vegetation fire in a temperate region

We investigate relationships between large-scale weather patterns and surface weather, as well as wildfires in England. High-pressure patterns, leading to

doi.org

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Dec 31

As we warm, we will see even more challenging fire seasons in the UK

The Guardian @theguardian.com · Dec 31

Ten English fire services tackled record number of grass, forest and crop fires in 2025

Fire chief says summer, the UK’s hottest on record, was ‘one of the most challenging for wildfires that we’ve ever faced’ Ten English fire services tackled a record number of grassland, woodland and crop fires during what was the UK’s hottest spring and summer on record, figures show. In total nearly 27,000 wildfires were dealt with by fire services in England during the prolonged dry weather of 2025, according to analysis by PA Media. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

The Guardian @theguardian.com · Dec 31

Ten English fire services tackled record number of grass, forest and crop fires in 2025

Fire chief says summer, the UK’s hottest on record, was ‘one of the most challenging for wildfires that we’ve ever faced’ Ten English fire services tackled a record number of grassland, woodland and crop fires during what was the UK’s hottest spring and summer on record, figures show. In total nearly 27,000 wildfires were dealt with by fire services in England during the prolonged dry weather of 2025, according to analysis by PA Media. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

BC Wildfire Weekly - Wildfires + More @bcwildfirewkly.bsky.social · Dec 26

KAMLOOPS: “Interface fires and a record number of calls for service to bylaw officers defined 2025 for Kamloops Fire Rescue, according to the city’s fire chief.” www.castanetkamloops.net/news/Kamloop... - @castanetkamloops.net

#Kamloops #Wildfires #WUI cc: #BCWildfire

Record calls, interface fires define 2025 for Kamloops fire chief

www.castanetkamloops.net

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Dec 23

Thompson Rivers University is seeking three senior researchers to nominate through the federal government’s recently announced Canada Impact+ Research Chairs program, an effort designed to bring world-leading research talent to Canada.
www.tru.ca/research/res...

www.canada.ca/en/impact-pl...

Canada Impact+ Research Chairs | Thompson Rivers University

www.tru.ca

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Dec 19

New paper out in Science Advances today on A guide to assessing the impacts of climate change on landscape fire. There are thousands of papers on fire and climate change, and this paper discusses how fire, its drivers, and its impacts are modeled.
www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

Graph showing the top 20 countries with the most journal articles published on the topic of climate change and landscape fire.

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Dec 16

Daily and monthly high temperature records broken in Kamloops BC yesterday (Dec. 15) with a scorching (for December) 18.6C.

Average mean temperature for Dec 15 is -3C but Dec 15, 2025 had a mean temperature was 13.2C

Daily Data Report for December 2025 - Climate - Environment and Climate Change Canada

climate, past weather

climate.weather.gc.ca

juli g pausas @jgpausas.bsky.social · Dec 11

Record-Breaking 2025 European Wildfires Concentrated in Northwest Iberia
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

~541000ha burnt under extreme monthly FWI
Shrublands were +vely selected by fire & to a lesser extent pines. Oaks & crops were -vely selected
@globalchangebio.bsky.social

🧪🌍🔥🌳 wildfire

Map of the Burned area in August 2025 across the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula (NW-IP; orange), highlighting megafires (> 10,000 ha; red).

Scatterplot of monthly Buned Aarea versus Fire Weather Iindex in the NW Iberian Peninsula for 1985–2025.

$Plot of the burn selectivity in August 2025 for the NW-IP: black dots show the fraction of BA for each vegetation class. “Pinus” and “Quercus” include natural, semi-natural, naturalized and plantations of native species. The red triangles indicate the presence of each class in the study area (i.e., what fraction of that vegetation class would have burned if fires were equally affecting all vegetation classes). Black error bars are 95% confidence intervals estimated through a conservative leave-one-fire-out jackknife.$

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Dec 10

New accepted paper in Environmental Research Letters on the extent of drought determines daily area burned (DAB) in Canadian forests. This study found a strong relationship
between DAB and the spatial extent of fire-conducive weather conditions.
Open access link
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Figure 1. Study area and models of daily area burned. Ecozone burned areas between 2001 and 2023, and the fire weather thresholds for Potential Spread Days (PSDs) that were used to derive Realized Spread Day sum. The black curve is the fitted generalized additive model based on the paired percentage area burned by unit Canadian Fire Weather Index System (CFWIS) indices (grey points). The shadowed areas and the vertical line are the range and the threshold of CFWIS indices used to identify a PSD.

Canada Wildfire 🔥 @canadawildfire.bsky.social · Dec 1

Join us for a webinar this Friday to learn how wildfire affects biomass and soil carbon! Dr. Chasmer will discuss the impacts of a high-severity 2022 fire in the Scotty Creek watershed (NWT).

Register ➡️

@mikeflannigan.bsky.social
#webinar #wildfire #science #Canada #peat #carbon

Canada Wildfire - Webinars and courses

Our webinars feature leading experts discussing a range of topics related to wildfires. Whether you're a researcher, practitioner, or simply interested in learning, our platform provides a space for d...

www.canadawildfire.org

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Nov 27

Forest Futures – new forest-climate knowledge hub based at uOttawa – is hiring three key positions:
🔹 Senior Research Associate lnkd.in/gfByajdH
🔹 Research Associate / Post-Doctoral Fellow www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...
🔹 Coordination / Partnerships Manager lnkd.in/gyKz_eNu

Forest Futures hiring Senior Research Associate in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | LinkedIn

Posted 1:07:03 PM. Job Title: Senior Research AssociateJob Type: Full-time Contract (Part-time 50%+ options…See this and similar jobs on LinkedIn.

lnkd.in

International Journal of Wildland Fire @ijwildlandfire.bsky.social · Nov 20

🔥New in IJWF:

Ohlson et al. map fine dead fuel moisture across a Colorado mixed-conifer forest using 1-h fuel samples from 80 plots. They reveal strong fine-scale spatiotemporal variability shaped by canopy, understory, and aspect.

🔗 doi.org/10.1071/WF25...

#IJWildlandFire

(a) Post-treatment forest structure and two people sampling fuels from the 0 to 1.7 m and 2.8 to 4.5 m plots within
the clustered design. (b) A plot placed between two whiskers to mark the distance intervals and the strings stretched
across the PVC sampling frame to denote the randomly generated 20 × 20 cm subplot for collecting the plot’s
observation. Black markings on the PVC sampling frame are at 20 cm intervals to create the grid of 36 subplots. (c)
Two people collecting a dead fine fuel sample into a pre-labeled and pre-weighed polyethylene resealable bag.

The observation period was organized into three phases: early summer (Julian day 138–189), mid-summer (Julian day
192–236) and late summer (Julian day 243–287) for the following plots. The dashed lines on the axes depicting FMC indicate
the commonly used 30% moisture of extinction threshold for dead understory forest fuels ( Rothermel et al. 1986). (a)
Empirical cumulative density functions of the three distributions (early summer, mid-summer, late summer) of observed
fuel moisture content. (b) Kernel density plots of the three intraseasonal period distributions. (c) Boxplots colored by
intraseasonal period depicting the distribution of FMC on each observation day. The box indicates the inter-quartile range
(25th to 75th percentiles). The mid-band indicates the median, and the whiskers indicate points within 1.5 times the interquartile range. Points outside the whiskers are outliers. Note: to visualize the data more effectively, the axes depicting
FMC (%) were visually constrained to 150%, preserving all values while focusing on a more relevant range.

The smoothed, marginal effects of understory cover, canopy cover, heat load index and precipitation on FMC
transformed to show the fitted GAM function on the response scale. The x axis shows values of the covariate, the rug
indicates the distribution of covariate observations, and the y axis shows expected FMC values. The gray bands
correspond to the 95% confidence interval and represent model uncertainty in the transformed (response scale)
estimate. Though negative values are not possible in FMC or under a Gamma distribution, the confidence interval
below 0 in the precipitation plot is an artifact of transformation and reflects wide uncertainty.

Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · Nov 15

Temperatures have warmed across the contiguous United States over the last five decades or so during the months of December through February (a rapidly warming season)...

Check out @climatecentral.org's winter package for more information and graphics: www.climatecentral.org/climate-matt... ❄️🥵

Map showing the change in average winter temperature in degrees Fahrenheit by county for the contiguous United States from 1970 to 2025. Nearly all areas are warming.

Kyle Brittain @badweatherkyle.bsky.social · Nov 12

I contributed an article to the Canada Wildfire newsletter!

Check out the Fall 2025 issue here:

www.canadawildfire.org/newsletter

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Nov 7

Graph from a recent paper on widespread & intense surface air temperature is scary for many reasons including fire. Higher temperatures & more extreme heat will lead to more intense fires in many parts of the world largely due to drier fuels driven by increased vpd.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

$This figure shows that the fraction of Earth’s surface area with extremely hot days has increased since 1950. The red curves show the annual mean of relative fractional global surface area with ERA5 daily mean surface air temperatures exceeding 30° and 40°C: where Aref refers to the area over the period of 1951 to 1980 and was estimated to be 7,565,377 km2 for days hotter than 30°C and 4636 km2 for days hotter than 40°C. The blue curves mark the corresponding relative fractional global surface area with daily mean surface air temperatures of −30° and −40°C.$

BC Wildfire Weekly - Wildfires + More @bcwildfirewkly.bsky.social · Nov 6

“Northwestern Ontario bore brunt of province's wildfire season with evacuations, outages and a record blaze” www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... - CBC Thunder Bay

#DeerLakeFirstNation #ONFire #Ontario #Wildfires

Canada had one of its worst wildfire seasons ever. Here's how one key region is already planning ahead | CBC News

The province's 2025 wildfire season officially ended Friday, with northwestern Ontario experiencing the most activity. The region, with the largest wildfire on record, faced several community evacuati...

www.cbc.ca

juli g pausas @jgpausas.bsky.social · Nov 5

Two PhD student positions on Fire Resilience of Amazon Forests (Application deadline Nov 26), Wageningen
@masha-vandersande.bsky.social @w-u-r.bsky.social

www.wur.nl/nl/vacature/...

Ana Stritih @anastritih.bsky.social · Nov 5

Do you like forests and computer models? 🌳🧑‍💻
Within the Future Forests excellence cluster, we are hiring two modellers for 7 year (!) positions here in Freiburg.

A scientific coordinator role: uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00004...

And and a scientific programmer role: uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00004...

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Oct 31

NPL5 in Canada means - Wildland fire activity is significant within one or more jurisdictions. Firefighters and equipment in every jurisdiction in Canada are in use & international help has been requested. Graph of the # of NPL5 days by year in Canada. There are not enough resources in recent years

figure describes the national preparedness levels for wildfire in Canada ranging from level 1 to 5 (highest)

graph showing the number of National Preparedness Level 5 days in Canada by year. Significant increases in recent year

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Oct 30

New report out today - theBritish Columbia Disaster and Climate Risk and Resilience Assessment (DCRRA). This assessment includes natural and climate-related hazards in BC—such as floods, extreme heat, wildfires and earthquakes

climatereadybc.gov.bc.ca/pages/dcrra

DCRRA

This page is part of the ClimateReadyBC site. The British Columbia Disaster and Climate Risk and Resilience Assessment (DCRRA) and the B.C. Hazard Insights Tool provide key information on different ha...

climatereadybc.gov.bc.ca

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Oct 28

New Perspective - Canada’s landscape fires spreading into uncharted territory
Canada clearly needs to do more. More to prevent & mitigate wildfires, more to increase our initial response capacity and capability to protect communities & critical infrastructure.
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Graph showing number of fires in Canada and area burned in Canada and BC (green bars) by year for 1959-2025

Mike Flannigan @mikeflannigan.bsky.social · Oct 27

Groups in Canada are calling on the federal government to take more action to prevent and combat wildfires
www.ctvnews.ca/video/2025/1...

CTV National News: Calls for action to protect Canadians against wildfires

Groups are calling on the federal government to take more action to prevent and combat wildfires. Andrew Johnson reports.

www.ctvnews.ca

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