![]() ![]() The annual area burned by forest fires in the western United States (US) has increased ten-fold over the past half-century 1, punctuated by the record 2020 western US fire season that produced widespread negative effects 2. Fuel limitations from fire-fuel feedbacks are unlikely to strongly constrain the profound climate-driven broad-scale increases in forest-fire area by the mid-21st century, highlighting the need for proactive adaptation to increased western US forest-fire impacts. Even models with strong feedbacks project increasing interannual variability in forest-fire area and more than a two-fold increase in the likelihood of years exceeding the 2020 fire season. Fire-fuel feedbacks only modestly attenuate the projected increase in forest-fire area. Assuming constant fuels, climate–fire models project a doubling of forest-fire area compared to 1991–2020. Here, we test how fire-fuel feedbacks moderate near-term (2021–2050) climate-driven increases in forest-fire area across the western US. As fires remove fuels for subsequent fires, feedbacks may impose constraints on the otherwise climate-driven trend of increasing forest-fire area. Escalating burned area in western US forests punctuated by the 2020 fire season has heightened the need to explore near-term macroscale forest-fire area trajectories. ![]()
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