This volume contains a selection of scientific papers which were presented at an international workshop held in Wengen, Switzerland, in September 1998. A number of state-of-the-art papers are presented, which discuss scientific, technological and socio-economic issues related to large forest fires which occur both in the tropics and in the extra-tropical regions. The book comprises some of the most recent research conducted in the context of the large forest fires which occurred in South-East Asia, Australia, Brazil and Africa in late 1997 and early 1998; while essentially due to human interference, these particular fires appear to have been enhanced by the particularly strong El Niño episode which prevailed at that time.
This interdisciplinary volume addresses a number of topics, in particular the contribution to climatic change by the greenhouse gases and aerosols emitted by large forest fires, the monitoring of fires both during and after combustion through satellite remote-sensing techniques, and numerical studies of the perturbation to the climate system using general circulation climate models.