Paper 4402: Characterizing Ignition Risk of Wildfire due to Lightning over Western United States

We examine the distributions of lightning strikes and wildfires across the Western United States (WUS). Lightning data from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) are consistent with the ones from the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN). We use 10-km spatial and 7-day temporal maximum distances to associate lightnings with wildfires. Only wildfires identified by the United States Forest Service (USFS) with a natural cause are considered for modeling. Considered factors of fire lightning include location, time, precipitation, and lightning area and energy. Location and time variables are significantly more important than the other factors. Albeit a good predictor, precipitation is usually nonzero along with a fire lightning. Data of years 2019-2021 are used for model training and data of 2022 for validation. Validation results show decent predictive performance regarding identification of fire lightning.