Clarke, Hamish Dr

<p>Fire managers and researchers have long understood the importance of fire weather in contributing to bushfire risk. Despite this, discussion of fire weather conditions had typically been limited to the scientific literature or the immediate wake of major disasters, and without the context of long term averages and trends. At the same time, there was increasing interest in understanding the regional impacts of climate change. However, this presupposed knowledge of current conditions – averages, extremes, variability and trends. We had this information for temperature and rainfall, but it was lacking for fire weather. High quality records were being kept, but they had not been analysed or publicly communicated.</p><p>We therefore saw clear value in a systematic study of long term trends in Australian fire weather conditions. We analysed daily records of the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) at 38 stations across Australia with high quality records. We found that from 1973 to 2010, average conditions increased at over one third of stations, and extreme conditions increased at over half of them. Over the same period, not a single station recorded a significant decline in FFDI. Our results painted a picture of increasing fire weather conditions at many locations across Australia, due to both higher FFDI values and a longer fire season.</p><p>Our results were picked up by major media outlets such as ABC News, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and The Guardian. At the time, a debate was raging over climate change and our policy responds (what’s changed?) and these results fed into that discussion. I gave presentations at major scientific conferences (e.g. the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s Annual Conference), to land managers (e.g. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) and decision makers (e.g. the state’s Emergency Management Climate Change Working Group).</p><p>The findings were subsequently featured in a range of influential and high profile reports and policy documents, including: the bi-annual State of the Climate report issued by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, the Australian Academy of Science’s The Science of Climate Change booklet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report and a series of Australian Climate Council reports on bushfires and climate change. Our results also figured prominently in at least one submission to an Australian Senate Inquiry into extreme weather, by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science.</p><p>As a result of the study and its reach, there is now a much greater awareness and understanding of Australian fire weather conditions among fire managers, decision makers and the general public. There is also a valuable baseline against which to measure and interpret future climate change impacts on fire weather in Australia.</p>

<p>Fire managers and researchers have long understood the importance of fire weather in contributing to bushfire risk. Despite this, discussion of fire weather conditions had typically been limited to the scientific literature or the immediate wake of major disasters, and without the context of long term averages and trends. At the same time, there was increasing interest in understanding the regional impacts of climate change. However, this presupposed knowledge of current conditions – averages, extremes, variability and trends. We had this information for temperature and rainfall, but it was lacking for fire weather. High quality records were being kept, but they had not been analysed or publicly communicated.</p><p>We therefore saw clear value in a systematic study of long term trends in Australian fire weather conditions. We analysed daily records of the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) at 38 stations across Australia with high quality records. We found that from 1973 to 2010, average conditions increased at over one third of stations, and extreme conditions increased at over half of them. Over the same period, not a single station recorded a significant decline in FFDI. Our results painted a picture of increasing fire weather conditions at many locations across Australia, due to both higher FFDI values and a longer fire season.</p><p>Our results were picked up by major media outlets such as ABC News, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and The Guardian. At the time, a debate was raging over climate change and our policy responds (what’s changed?) and these results fed into that discussion. I gave presentations at major scientific conferences (e.g. the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s Annual Conference), to land managers (e.g. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service) and decision makers (e.g. the state’s Emergency Management Climate Change Working Group).</p><p>The findings were subsequently featured in a range of influential and high profile reports and policy documents, including: the bi-annual State of the Climate report issued by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, the Australian Academy of Science’s The Science of Climate Change booklet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report and a series of Australian Climate Council reports on bushfires and climate change. Our results also figured prominently in at least one submission to an Australian Senate Inquiry into extreme weather, by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science.</p><p>As a result of the study and its reach, there is now a much greater awareness and understanding of Australian fire weather conditions among fire managers, decision makers and the general public. There is also a valuable baseline against which to measure and interpret future climate change impacts on fire weather in Australia.</p>