Weather and Climate Information for Southwest Wildfire Management

Working closely with wildland fire managers in the Southwest, CLIMAS researchers are exploring how to increase the impact of weather and climate information for wildland fire decision making. Through a large survey of Southwest wildland fire professionals, the team found that while this community has access to a wide range of sources for weather and climate data and information, relatively few sources are used to inform decisions.

In an effort to deliver the wildland fire community relevant and actionable information, the team developed the Burn Period Tracker tool. This tool provides real-time, location-specific visualizations of burn periods—the number of hours per day conducive to burning—for wildland fire managers across the Southwest. The Burn Period Tracker is linked as a key resource on the Fuels/Fire Danger page of the Southwest Coordination Center website, which was accessed over 1600 times in 2024.

"I saw this project as an opportunity to learn some stuff, do it comprehensively, and get all the people I knew [in the wildfire community] to engage. Getting that engagement was huge and CLIMAS gave fire managers a much wider forum to participate. I think that's part of why we got good engagement. We were able to give them a voice, which helped get the southwest wildfire community to move things forward."
–Chuck Maxwell, Predictive Services, Southwest Coordination Center

CLIMAS Lead: George Frisvold

Research Team: Dan Ferguson, Michael Crimmins, Jennie Doss, Chuck Maxwell

Partners: Southwest Coordination Center

Publications

Crimmins, M. A., Maxwell, C., Ferguson, D. B., & Frisvold, G. B.. (2024). Burn Period: A Use-Inspired Metric to Track Wildfire Risk across Arizona and New Mexico in the Southwest United States. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 63(12), 1559–1568. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-24-0067.1

Frisvold, G. B., Zhang, N., Crimmins, M. A., Ferguson, D. B., & Maxwell, C.. (2024). Demand for Information for Wildland Fire Management. Atmosphere, 15(11), 1364. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15111364

Ferguson, D. B., Frisvold, G. B., Maxwell, C., & Crimmins, M. A.. (2024). How Are Weather and Climate Products and Decision Support Systems Used in Wildland Fire Decision-Making in the U.S. Southwest?. Weather, Climate, and Society, 16(4), 789–802. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-24-0069.1

Media

Climate Assessment for the Southwest, "Burn Period Tracker - A Simple Tool Making a Big Impact," 5/30/2025.