24 March 2025 | 08:00 - 10:00 (MST)
Open Session - HYBRID
Room: UMC Fourth Floor - 415
Organiser: Katriina Veijola (Finnish Meteorological Institute / Finland)
Event Description:
The session will provide up to date information about wildfire issues in the new Finnish IBA Wildfire-, Cryosphere- and Arctic Passion projects.
A new Finnish IBA Wildfire and trafficability project for SAV phase 4 continues working with Wildfire theme in Finland and develops the ignition identification SAV towards implementation via a demonstration in the Nordic countries. Previous phases were successful and formed a definition of a Wildfire Shared Arctic Variables with the help of experts on wildfire, including Indigenous Peoples.
Arctic PASSION (Pan-Arctic observing System of Systems: Implementing Observations for societal Needs) is a Horizon 2020 project that strives to rise to the scientific and societal challenges of Arctic climate change through the co-creation of a comprehensive, coordinated, and coherent Arctic Observing System of Systems. In addition, there are Shared Arctic Variables (SAVs) defined to several themes to be able to deal with different phenomenon in the Arctic, for example wildfire. The Finnish Wildfire work has contributed to the SAV work in Arctic PASSION project and now the Wildfire Expert Panel work is proceeding in North America as well.
Cryo-Scope project is an inland-ice and snow focused Horizon Europe action that starts in February 2025. While the new Finnish IBA project focuses on summer trafficability to estimate soil and vegetation wetness, Cryo-Scope will develop winter trafficability and allows a service for trafficability all year round. It also improves the estimation of snow and ice water resources connected with seasonal drought forecasts. This component can also be useful for long-term preparedness for wildfires.
In the session, the accessibility of the terrain and wildfire risk relationship will be explained and how the accessibility of the CryosScope project contributes to the creation of a service to source local wildfire relevant information.
The session would contain the following four presentations:
- Finnish wildfire SAV phase 4 -project (to be presented by Anni Kröger, Finnish Meteorological Institute, FMII)
- Arctic PASSION project actions on a Wildifre SAV (presented by Katriina Veijola, FMII)
- North American Wildfire Expert Panel status in Arctic PASSION project (presented by Chris Waigl, University of Alaska Fairbanks)
- Connection between accessibility of the terrain and wildfire risk, contribution from CryoScope project (presented by Mikko Strahlendorff, FMI)
- Discussion of interested parties in North America to set up a terrain trafficability/wildfire related demonstration and prepare for a ignition identification SAV implementation