Authors / CoAuthors
Cechet, R.P. | Sanabria, L.A. | French, I.
Abstract
The dry-tropics of central Queensland has an annual bushfire threat season that generally extends from September to November. Fire weather hazard is quantified using either the Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) or the Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI) (Luke and McArthur, 1978). Weather observations (temperature, relative humidity and wind speed) are combined with an estimate of the fuel state to predict likely fire behaviour if an ignition eventuates. A high resolution numerical weather model (dynamic downscaling) was utilised to provide spatial texture over the Rockhampton region for a range of historical days where bushfire hazard (as measured at the Rockhampton Airport meteorological station) was known to be severe to extreme. From the temperature, relative humidity and wind speeds generated by the model, the maximum FFDI for each simulated day was calculated using a maximum drought factor. Each of these FFDI maps was then normalised to the value of the FFDI at the grid point corresponding to Rockhampton Airport (ensemble produced). The annual recurrance interval (ARI) of FFDI at Rockhampton Airport for the current climate was calculated from observations by fitting Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distributions. For future climate, we considered three downscaled General Circulation Models (GCM's) forced by the A2 emission scenario for atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. The spatial pattern of the 50 and 100 year ARI fire danger rating for the Rockhampton region (current and future climate) was determined. In general, a small spatial increase in the fire danger rating is reflected in the ensemble model average for the 2090 climate. This is reflected throughout the Rockhampton region in both magnitude and extent through 2050 to 2090. Cluster areas of higher (future climate) bushfire hazard were mapped for planning applications. Handbook MODSIM2013 Conference
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nonGeographicDataset
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75725
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- External PublicationConference Paper
- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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- Environmental Sciences
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- Published_Internal
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2013-01-01T00:00:00
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