How does climate change affect forest fire rate in British Columbia?

Climate change is known to be an important risk of forest fire. Studies have shown an increased risk of fire because of rising temperatures, drier conditions, more lightning from stronger storms, added dry fuel for fires and a longer fire season and "global warming makes forests more susceptible to fire." In this paper, we use modern functional data analysis methods to explore the variations of forest fire rate in British Columbia, Canada among 63 consecutive years (1950-2012), and to investigate the historical effect of temperature and precipitation on forest fire rate. Functional principle component analysis shows that forest fire rate has increased since 2004 compared to years before that. Historical functional linear model shows that the concurrent effect of temperature and precipitation are both strong. Higher temperature and less precipitation lead to more forest fire. Temperature from January to July has a historical effect on forest fire rate from August to November, while only short term effect of precipitation up to two months is detected.