Transcript Report: Session 2

Report: Session 2
• 1115
Extreme event studies
John
McBride
• 1130
Climate change and fire weather
Kevin Hennessy
• 1145
Seasonal Prediction
Chris
Lucas
McBride:Extreme event studies
• Main point: Case studies are the major mechanism for studying
processes, learning what the unknowns are, for input to forecast
algorithm development and to direct climate-change research
Questions/discussion:
Reeder supported the idea through getting excited at what he had
learned from his studies of Black Saturday
Puri made the point that the model developers, the radar people, the
seasonal prediction group etc are doing case studies anyway.
McBride answer: sure, but they need to have the case studies,
process studies and publication built in as an integral part of their
workplan.
Rapporteur assessment: Capability to carry out this basic
phenomological research on extreme fire weather events and
seasons resides only in our meteorological community (CAWCR,
Monash, Melb Uni). It is incumbent on us to develop and maintain
this capability.
Climate change and fire weather Kevin
Hennessy
• Main point: Enormous pressure from stakeholders to give quantitative
projections for number of fire events, severity, length of season etc.
Described some basic research already done by CAWCR group on
projections of fire behaviour
• Questions/Discussion
– Reeder. Climate projections of actual fire occurrence will require projections
of fuel
– Puri: Methodology should have verification of projection skill for recent
events, using projections from a decade earlier
– Mills: questioned downscaling methodology, as compared to use of high
resolution climate models
– Rapporteur Assessment: The large number of interjections and questions on
the methodology is a statement that we require Climate Change scientists
doing this work: The alternative is we put the projections online on the web,
and have scientists who are not familiar with climate science simply plugging
the future climate temperature, wind, humidity fields into their fire-behaviour
models.
Seasonal Prediction
•
•
Chris Lucas
Main point: Described current seasonal fire season forecast process – Not strongly
supported financially but a basic service that is in demand. Needs: Monitoring of
current climate FFDI etc; Objective forecasts – either statistical or dynamical question on the dynamical models.
Discussion/questions:
– Wheeler: Question of verification of seasonal forecasts of fire behaviour
– Chechet: To emergency managers fire is a fuel problem – need to monitor and forecast fuel
– Meyers: Across Northern Australia there is a huge interannual variability in fire occurrence –
basic data set for verification
– May: Given role of soil dryness, availability of fuel, curing etc – need is for a earth systems
modelling approach to seasonal forecast
– General theme from this and the previous talk – Organising the data is a major issue: we have
the meteorological data under control. It comes across we do not have ready access, a good
archive real-time and historic data on the fuel, the vegetation, the location of current fires etc.
– Rapporteur Assessment: Clear and obvious need to further develop our 2-week to seasonal
fire weather forecasting capability. This will require a strong interaction with community who
hold tth fuel, curing vegetation etc data