Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent years, newly available observations, and modelling systems as well as advancements in machine learning have transformed the capabilities of fire danger prediction systems. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has set out to forecast wildfire probability on a global scale up to a week in advance. A key milestone was the development of the SPARKY-Fuel Characteristics dataset, released in 2024, which provides the first long-term, high-resolution record of real-time fuel status.This study evaluates ECMWF’s operational data-driven fire prediction system over its first year. Through analysis of major wildfire events, including the extensive fires in Canada in 2023 and the fires in Los Angeles in 2025, we demonstrate the potential of data-driven methods to outperform traditional fire danger metrics. The results highlight the role of dynamic, global fuel assessments and machine learning in improving the accuracy and timeliness of fire probability forecasts.Our findings underscore the importance of integrating both innovative data-driven approaches and key variables into operational forecasting systems, providing critical support for fire management and mitigation efforts worldwide.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".