The impact of climate change on the risk of forest and grassland fires in Australia

Pitman, A. J.; Narisma, Gemma; McAneney, John

doi:10.1007/s10584-007-9243-6

Cited by 171 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…During the bushfire seasons (October-February) of 1993-94 and 2002-03 for instance, more than 2,200,000 ha were burned. Moreover,20 australian bushfires are predicted to increase with higher temperatures as a consequence of climate change, with an increase of 25% of the fire risk in New South Wales (Pitman et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the New South Wales fires during October 2013 on regional air quality in eastern Australia

Rea

Paton-Walsh

Turquety

et al. 2016

Atmospheric Environment

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Smoke plumes from fires contain atmospheric pollutants that can be transported to populated areas and effect regional air quality. In this paper, the characteristics and impact of the fire plumes from a major fire event that occurred in October 2013 (17-26) in the New South Wales (NSW) in Australia, near the populated areas of Sydney and Wollongong, are studied. Measurements from the Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) spectrometer located at the University of Wollongong allowed a calculation of specific emission factors (EFs) in terms of grams per kilogram of dry fuel burned: 1640 g kg-1 of carbon dioxide; 107 g kg-1 of carbon monoxide; 7.8 g kg-1 of methane and 0.16 g kg-1 of nitrous oxide. These EFs have then been used to calculate daily fire emissions for the NSW fire event using the APIFLAME emissions' model, leading to an increase of 54% of CO emitted compared to calculations with EFs from Akagi et al. (2011), widely used in the literature. Simulations have been conducted for this event using the regional chemistry-transport model (CTM) CHIMERE, allowing the first evaluation of its regional impact. Fire emissions are assumed well mixed into the boundary layer. The model simulations have been evaluated compared to measurements at the NSW air quality stations. The mean correlation coefficients (R) are 0.44 for PM10, 0.60 for PM2.5 and 0.79 for CO, with a negative bias for CO (-14%) and a positive bias for PM2.5 (64%). The model shows higher performance for lower boundary layer heights and wind speeds. According to the observations, 7 days show concentrations exceeding the air quality Australian national standards for PM10, 8 days for PM2.5. In the simulations, 5 days are correctly simulated for PM10, 8 days for PM2.5. For PM10, the model predicts 1 additional day of exceedance (one false detection). During this fire episode, inner Sydney is affected during 5 days by PM exceedances, that are mainly attributed to organic carbon in the model simulations. To evaluate the influence of the diurnal variability and the injection heights of fire emissions, two additional simulations were performed: one with all fire emissions injected below 1 km (CHIM_1 km), since satellite observations suggest low injection for this fire case, and one with a diurnal profile (CHIM_diu) adjusted to best match surface observations closest to the fires. CHIM_1 km displays less bias and root mean square error, and CHIM_diu presents a good agreement for hourly statistics for stations where peaks of PM are well captured, but enhances the differences when a peak is overestimated by the model. This sensitivity analysis highlights significant uncertainties related to these two key fire parameters (which add up to uncertainties on emissions), resulting in variations on concentrations of PM and CO. AbstractSmoke plumes from fires contain atmospheric pollutants that can be transported to populated areas and affect regional air quality. A major fire event from 17 to 26 October 2013 in New South Wales (NSW) in Australia, near the populate...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the New South Wales fires during October 2013 on regional air quality in eastern Australia

Rea

Paton-Walsh

Turquety

et al. 2016

Atmospheric Environment

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“…There has long been particular concern about the severity of future fire seasons in southern Australia, where the expected trend in rainfall is negative and in temperature is positive (CSIRO & Bureau of Meteorology 2007), and where recent summers have seen disastrous levels of wildfire activity. Several studies have attempted to assess the likely severity of fire seasons in Australia under future climate scenarios, including those of Williams et al (2001), Hennessy et al (2005), Pitman et al (2007) and . Because there is a limited range of variables and frequency of output from the general circulation models (GCMs) relied on for climate change simulations, measures of daily fire danger, such as the forest fire danger index (FFDI, Luke & McArthur 1978), cannot be calculated as a daily time series.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the impact of climate change on extreme fire weather events over southeastern Australia

Hasson¹,

Mills²,

Timbal³

et al. 2009

Clim. Res.

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Extreme fire weather events in southeastern Australia are frequently associated with strong cold fronts moving through the area. A recent study has shown that the 850 hPa temperature and the magnitude of its gradient over a small region of southeastern Australia provide a simple means of discriminating the most extreme cold frontal events during the last 40 yr from reanalysis data sets. Applying this technique to 10 general circulation models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project and calibrating the temperature gradient and temperature climatology of each model's simulation of the climate of the 20th century against the reanalysis climates allows estimates of likely changes in frequency of this type of extreme cold front in the middle and end of the 21st century. Applying this analysis to the output of 10 GCM simulations of the 21st century, using low and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, suggests that the frequency of such events will increase from around 1 event every 2 yr during the late 20th century to around 1 event per year in the middle of the 21st century and 1 to 2 events per year by the end of the 21st century; however, there is a great degree of variation between models. In addition to a greater overall increase under the high emissions scenario, the rate at which the increase occurs amplifies during the second half of the century, whereas under the low emissions scenario the number of extreme cases stabilizes, although still at a higher rate than that experienced in the late 20th century. KEY WORDS: Fire weather · Climate change · Strong cold front Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisherClim Res 39: [159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172] 2009 (Bureau of Meteorology 1984), the Canberra fire in January 2003 (McLeod 2003) or the Lower Eyre Peninsula fires of 11 January 2005 (Bureau of Meteorology 2005). These have enormous social and economic consequences, yet only occur on a few days each decade.In a retrospective study of the meteorology of the Ash Wednesday 1983 fires, Mills (2005a) showed that many of the most extreme fire events in southeastern Australia over the 40 yr to the end of the 2003 summer, and ~80% of the bushfire-related deaths during that period, occurred on days on which the magnitude of the east -west 850 hPa temperature gradient in a small rectangle over southeastern Australia was in the highest 0.3% of its distribution. These calculations were based on the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis (NNR) data set (Kalnay et al. 1996) using analyses at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC for the summer months. It was argued that while this measure of synoptic severity did not identify a unique weather element sequence at any location, it did indicate a strong front. The orientation of the southeast Australian coastline, a hot, continental air mass inland and the cooler maritime air mass over the Southern Ocean leads to an inten...

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“…A growing number of modelling studies have projected that climate change will increase the likelihood of fire weather across fire-prone areas of our planet. These include Australia, New Zealand, North America, Russia and many parts of Mediterranean Europe (Amiro, et al, 2001;Beer & Williams, 1995;Brown, et al, 2004;Cary, 2002;Flannigan, et al, 2005;Goldammer & Price, 1998;Hennessy, et al, 2006;Keeton, et al, 2007;Krawchuk, et al, 2009;Moriondo, et al, 2006;Mouillot, et al, 2002;Murdiyarso, 2006;Pearce, et al, 2005;Pitman, et al, 2006;Price & Rind, 1994;Reinhard, et al, 2005;Schumacher & Bugmann, 2006;Williams, et al, 2001;Wotton, et al, 2006). In summary, we are likely to see more very high to extreme fire danger days.…”

Section: 32b Climate Change and Fire Weathermentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a Triangulated Theoretical Framework and Mixed Methods: Frame, Institutional and Network Analyses

Bosomworth¹

2014

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The impact of climate change on the risk of forest and grassland fires in Australia

Cited by 171 publications

References 31 publications

Impact of the New South Wales fires during October 2013 on regional air quality in eastern Australia

Impact of the New South Wales fires during October 2013 on regional air quality in eastern Australia

Assessing the impact of climate change on extreme fire weather events over southeastern Australia

Using a Triangulated Theoretical Framework and Mixed Methods: Frame, Institutional and Network Analyses

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