Wildfires are an important component of terrestrial ecosystem ecology but also a major natural hazard to societies, and their frequency and spatial distribution must be better understood. At a given location, risk from wildfire is associated with the annual fraction of burned area, which is expected to increase in response to climate warming.

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) established an Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcers (SLCFs) in 2009 with the goal of reviewing the state of science surrounding SLCFs in the Arctic and recommending the science tasks that AMAP should conduct or promote to improve the state of knowledge and its application to policy-m