Climate Change Increases the Potential for Extreme Wildfires

Virgilio, Giovanni Di; Evans, Jason P.; Blake, Stephanie A. P.; Armstrong, Matthew; Dowdy, Andrew J.; Sharples, Jason J.; McRae, Rick

doi:10.1029/2019gl083699

Cited by 188 publications

(162 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Bushfires have always been a feature of the natural environment in Australia, but the risk has increased over time as fire seasons start earlier, finish later, and extreme fire weather (ie, very hot, dry and windy conditions that make fires fast moving and very difficult to control) becomes more severe with climate change . The 2019–20 bushfires in Australia, particularly in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory, have caused at least 33 fatalities, extensive damage to property and destruction of flora and fauna, and have exposed millions of people to extreme levels of air pollution.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bushfire smoke: urgent need for a national health protection strategy

Vardoulakis

Jalaludin

Morgan³

et al. 2020

Medical Journal of Australia

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bushfire smoke: urgent need for a national health protection strategy

Vardoulakis

Jalaludin

Morgan³

et al. 2020

Medical Journal of Australia

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“…The FFDI/C-Haines distribution in that region shows pyroCbs occurring over a wide range of FFDI but under more limited extreme values of C- Haines (Di Virgilio et al, 2019). In Tasmania, however, we found a fire weather environment conducive for pyroCb occurrence is likely to have high concurrent values of C-Haines and FFDI ( Figure 5), a conjunction that occurs rarely, although this may change with the projected warming climate in Australia (Dowdy, 2018;Di Virgilio et al, 2019). It is worth noting that the FFDI/C-Haines distribution for Tasmania reveals that high FFDI (>25) does not influence large fire occurrence as much as high C-Haines (>9), consistent with findings of Di Virgilio et al (2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…An important correlate of pyroCb formation is atmospheric instability and moisture (Luderer et al, 2006;Lareau and Clements, 2016;Rosenfeld et al, 2007;Fromm et al, 2010;Di Virgilio et al, 2019). A fire weather index commonly used in Australia to monitor meteorological conditions in the lower atmosphere is the continuous Haines Index (C- Haines;Mills and McCaw, 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of an extreme Pyrocumulonimbus-driven wildfire event in Tasmania, Australia

Ndalila

Williamson

Fox‐Hughes

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. Extreme fires have substantial adverse effects on society and natural ecosystems. Such events can be associated with intense coupling of fire behaviour with the atmosphere, resulting in extreme fire characteristics such as pyrocumulonimbus cloud (pyroCb) development. Concern that anthropogenic climate change is increasing the occurrence of pyroCbs globally is driving more focused research into these meteorological phenomena. Using 6-minute scans from a nearby weather radar, we describe the development of a pyroCb during the afternoon of 4 January 2013 above the Forcett-Dunalley fire in south-eastern Tasmania. We relate storm development to: (1) near-surface weather using the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI), and the C-Haines Index, a measure of the vertical atmospheric stability and dryness both derived from gridded weather reanalysis for Tasmania (BARRA-TA), and (2) a chronosequence of fire severity derived from remote sensing. We show that the pyroCb rapidly developed over a 24-minute period in the afternoon of 4 January, with the cloud top reaching a height of 15 km. The pyroCb was associated with a highly unstable atmosphere (C-Haines 10-11) and Severe-marginally Extreme (FFDI 60-75) near-surface fire weather, and formed over an area of forest that was severely burned (total crown defoliation). We use spatial patterns of elevated fire weather in Tasmania, and fire weather during major runs of large wildfires in Tasmania for the period 2007–2016 to geographically and historically contextualise this pyroCb event. Although the Forcett-Dunalley fire is the only known record of a pyroCb in Tasmania, our results show that eastern and south-eastern Tasmania are prone to the conjunction of high FFDI and C-Haines values that have been associated with pyroCb development. Our findings have implications for fire weather forecasting and wildfire management, and highlight the vulnerability of southeast Tasmania to extreme fire events.

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“…The number of pyroCbs in the register is (fortunately) low. However it is growing rapidly (Di Virgilio, et al, 2019), making it important to assess any trends. Without any quantitative foundation, the following broad assessments may be made:…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A B Figure 4. PyroCb occurrence seasonality, from Di Virgilio, et al, 2019. (A) For Epoch 1, month of occurrence (with month number displayed as on a clock-face) of all known pyroCbs in the study domain with peak activity month (as in Figure 2A).…”

Section: Pyrocbsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of southeast Australian fire activity seasons

2019

El Sawah, S. (Ed.) MODSIM2019, 23rd International Congress on Modelling and Simulation.

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It is widely reported that climate change is impacting on wildfire risks in Australia. Fire seasons are seen to be starting earlier and finishing later. Climate modelling produces equivalent changes in fire weather. However national-scale datasets on fire activity are not widely available. A number of studies have used algorithm-generated "hotspots" from the pair of MODIS sensors carried on the TERRA and AQUA satellites for over 17 years. This dataset includes all types of fire-whether planned or not, and does not pickup low intensity fire activity. It is also sensitive to cloud cover. Nevertheless, the MODIS hotspot dataset, covering 4.5 million records since July 2002, provides a coverage that is broadly complete and consistent within those constraints. Hotspots can be classified according to geographic location and time of year. McRae & Featherston (2015) used a technique of producing "wind roses" to show fire activity seasonality, showing relative occurrences by month. To do this hotspots were aggregated to one degree grid-cells. In this paper hotspot "wind roses" are generated though aggregation to half-degree grid-cells over southeast Australia. To detect changes in fire activity patterns, the dataset is split into two epochs: Epoch 1 spans from July 2002 to June 2012, and Epoch 2 from July 2012 to June 2019. Impacts of climate change may be assessed through changes in key parameters of the pattern between the epochs. A number of grid-cells lack sufficient hotspots to form clear patterns. Others have fire activity through much of the year, and a seasonality pattern cannot be described. Change detection requires a defined pattern for both epochs.

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Climate Change Increases the Potential for Extreme Wildfires

Cited by 188 publications

References 37 publications

Bushfire smoke: urgent need for a national health protection strategy

Bushfire smoke: urgent need for a national health protection strategy

Evolution of an extreme Pyrocumulonimbus-driven wildfire event in Tasmania, Australia

Evolution of southeast Australian fire activity seasons

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