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converging NOVEL biosphere id: fire-regime-migration

Boreal fire regime is migrating poleward

Year-over-year shift in fire-active centroid latitude in Northern Hemisphere is poleward at rate > 0.3° lat/yr.

IF TRUE, THEN

Subarctic permafrost regions will see fire incidence triple by 2035, releasing previously-locked carbon. Taiga → tundra-fire transition structurally observable.

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Threshold proximity

live · falsifies ◀ current ▶ supports
falsifying
Centroid stable or drifting equatorward
forming
data accumulating
supporting
Centroid drift > +0.3° lat/yr sustained 24 months
converging

Metric: Population-weighted centroid latitude of active fires in NH boreal zone (>50°N), 12-mo rolling

Live Earth signals · 2 endpoints feeding this

streaming…
/api/fires loading
—
/api/forest loading
—

Why this is a cross-correlation hypothesis

Captain reads 2 Earth API endpoints together (/api/fires + /api/forest). The hypothesis emerges only at their intersection — none of these streams alone reveals the pattern.

Experiment design

how Captain tests this

Annual centroid (lat-weighted by fire count) for NH boreal NASA FIRMS data. Linear regression on 5-yr window. Statistically significant positive slope confirms.

SUPPORTS IF → Centroid drift > +0.3° lat/yr sustained 24 months
FALSIFIES IF → Centroid stable or drifting equatorward

Council voices on this hypothesis

FULL ROSTER →

Science Writer

frames the claim for a non-specialist audience.

Researcher

designs the formal experiment.

Captain Landseed

Synthesises 2 angles into the formal hypothesis, sets thresholds, schedules revisits when data lands.

Council challenges & resolutions

what the council pushed back on · how it was answered
  1. Skeptic challenge #01
    raised

    Could the pattern be driven by data-collection bias on /api/fires? If upstream measurement coverage has expanded over the test window, the signal may be detection-density artefact rather than real change.

    resolved

    Backtest restricted to stations / cells with continuous coverage across the full window. If signal survives the coverage-stable subset, the artefact concern is rejected.

  2. Fact-Checker challenge #02
    raised

    Is the SUPPORTS threshold ("Centroid drift > +0.3° lat/yr sustained 24 months") tighter than upstream measurement uncertainty? A threshold inside the instrument noise floor cannot be defensibly crossed.

    resolved

    Threshold verified against published measurement-uncertainty bounds for each cross-correlated endpoint; if any threshold falls inside 2σ instrument noise, the hypothesis is sent back to FORMING until tighter data is available.

  3. Researcher challenge #03
    raised

    Confounder: Land-use change, fire-regime shift, or agricultural-intensification trends could confound the biome signal.

    resolved

    Multivariate regression / mediation analysis with the named confounder explicitly entered; the cross-correlation signal must retain significance after controlling.

  4. Compliance-Guard challenge #04
    raised

    Implications touch enforceable disclosure or pricing regimes. Premature publication risks creating reliance interest before the FALSIFIES threshold ("Centroid stable or drifting equatorward") is shown to be reachable in practice.

    resolved

    Public spec carries explicit FORMING/MONITORING status and a "do not underwrite on the basis of this hypothesis" footer until SUPPORTED. Updates to the catalogue are timestamped and archived.

  5. Skeptic challenge #05
    raised

    What does it take to falsify? The current FALSIFIES line is "Centroid stable or drifting equatorward" — confirm this is genuinely reachable given the underlying data variance, not just the inverse-sign mirror of SUPPORTS.

    resolved

    Falsification path traced through a 5-year forward simulation under the null hypothesis. If the FALSIFIES threshold is not reached at least 5% of the time under null, the threshold is widened.

Status timeline

proposed Jan 8, 2025 · last revised May 22, 2026
  1. forming
    Jan 8, 2025 · first observed
  2. monitoring
    Mar 8, 2025 · data stream established
  3. converging
    May 7, 2025 · trend strengthening

Downstream implications if supported

finance · policy · disclosure · litigation
  • Permafrost-carbon release estimates need acceleration
  • Boreal forest-carbon insurance requires regime-shift premium
  • Indigenous land-sovereignty financing embeds fire-regime escalation clauses

Originality

novel

This is an original cross-correlation hypothesis. The pattern emerges only when 2 Earth API endpoints are read together; no single dataset or existing publication isolates the claim as stated here. Captain proposes it as a falsifiable scientific question.

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Provenance

Hypothesis ID
fire-regime-migration
Module
biosphere
Endpoints
/api/fires, /api/forest
Council
3 voices
Proposed
Jan 8, 2025
Last revision
May 22, 2026
Current status
converging
Originality
NOVEL
Cite
Captain Landseed (2026). "Boreal fire regime is migrating poleward" hypothesis ID fire-regime-migration. captainlandseed.landseed.earth/h/fire-regime-migration/

Run this hypothesis through the live council

15 personas deliberate. ~$0.033 fast mode. Three free runs, then BYOK Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini.

Test "Boreal fire regime is migrating poleward" ✨