WRF and SFIRE simulations of the Layman fuel reduction burn

Peace, Mika; McCaw, Lachlan; Kepert, Jeffrey D.; Mills, Graham A.; Mattner, Trent W.

doi:10.22499/2.6503.002

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…There are also cases where a relatively weak, non-frontal or seabreeze wind change can still dramatically affect fire behaviour (e.g. Peace et al 2015aPeace et al , 2015b.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climatology of wind changes and elevated fire danger over Victoria, Australia

Mills

Harris

Brown

et al. 2020

J. South. Hemisph. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wind changes are a critical factor in fire management, particularly on days of elevated fire danger, and have been shown to be a factor in many firefighter entrapments in Australia and the USA. While there have been numerous studies of frontal wind changes over southeastern Australia since the 1950s, a spatial climatology of wind change strength and frequency over Victoria has hitherto been limited by the relatively low number of observation sites that have both high temporal resolution observations and sufficient length of record. This study used a recently developed high spatial (4-km grid) and temporal (1 hour) resolution, 46-year, homogeneous gridded fire weather climatology data set to generate a climatology of wind change strength by season at each gridpoint across Victoria. The metric used to define a wind change is the vector difference between the wind speed and direction over each 1-hour interval, with the highest value occuring on each day being selected for spatial analysis of strength and frequency. The highest values of wind change strength are found along the crest of the Great Dividing Range (the Great Divide), with a peak in spring. Elsewhere, the highest values occur in summer, with the areas south of the Great Divide, west of Melbourne and in central Gippsland showing higher values than the remainder of the state. The strength of wind changes generally decreases north of the Great Divide, although it is stronger in the northwest of the state in spring rather than in autumn. Lowest summertime (and other seasons) values occur in the northeast of the state and in far-east Gippsland. Exploring the frequencies of days when the highest daily Forest Fire Danger Index and the highest daily wind change strength jointly exceed defined thresholds shows that the northwest of the state has the highest springtime frequencies, whereas the highest autumn frequencies occur west of Melbourne and south of the Great Divide. The highest numbers of joint events in summer (when the greatest frequencies also occur) extend from central Victoria west to the South Australian border, with a secondary maximum in central Gippsland. These analyses offer important information for fire weather forecasters and for fire practitioners when preparing for a fire season or managing a fire campaign (for example, for allocating resources or understanding risks).

show abstract

“…There are also cases where a relatively weak, non-frontal or seabreeze wind change can still dramatically affect fire behaviour (e.g. Peace et al 2015aPeace et al , 2015b.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climatology of wind changes and elevated fire danger over Victoria, Australia

Mills

Harris

Brown

et al. 2020

J. South. Hemisph. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The Kilmore East fire was a fire complex located almost 100 km north of Melbourne responsible for 119 fatalities and which burnt more than 125,000 ha. Although different in detail, the approach taken to modeling the Kilmore East fire complex is similar to Coen (), Coen et al (), Filippi et al (), Kochanski et al (), Coen and Riggan (), Coen and Schroeder (), and Peace, Mattner, et al (), and Peace, McCaw, et al (). Moreover, the current paper builds on the earlier study by Engel et al (), who forecast the meteorology of Black Saturday with a high‐resolution nested simulation with the UM.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupled Atmosphere‐Fire Simulations of the Black Saturday Kilmore East Wildfires With the Unified Model

Toivanen

Engel

Reeder

et al. 2019

J Adv Model Earth Syst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A model for the spread of a wildfire is developed within the U.K. Met Office Unified Model (UM) and used to simulate the Kilmore East fire complex (in southeastern Australia) on Black Saturday (7 February 2009). The UM is configured with four nests with horizontal grid spacings of 4 km, 1.5 km, 444 m, and 144 m. In the first simulation, the UM simply provides predictions of the near‐surface conditions for the wildfire model with no feedbacks to the atmosphere from the fire. In the second, the atmosphere and fire are coupled, allowing the fire to affect the local‐scale weather. The agreement between the coupled simulation and the observed fire behavior is reasonably good. For example, the area burnt is approximately 80% of the actual area burnt. However, such agreement is achieved only by coupling the fire to the atmosphere and, importantly, by igniting 18 additional fires at the times and places the long‐range transport of burning material (spotting) was observed. Without coupling the burnt area is about half of that observed. The calculations reported here suggest that the behavior and spread of fires like the Kilmore East fire are predictable but only when long‐range spotting is included and the atmosphere and fires are coupled. Additional numerical experiments with coarser grids suggest that, although the details of the fire spread are lost, a grid spacing of 1.5 km may be sufficient to simulate the main features of the fire spread.

show abstract

Evaluation of the Weather Research and Forecasting model in simulating fire weather for the south-west of Western Australia

Kala

Tenna

Rudloff

et al. 2020

Int. J. Wildland Fire

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model was used to simulate fire weather for the south-west of Western Australia (SWWA) over multiple decades at a 5-km resolution using lateral boundary conditions from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA)-Interim reanalysis. Simulations were compared with observations at Australian Bureau of Meteorology meteorological stations and the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) was used to quantify fire weather. Results showed that, overall, the WRF reproduced the annual cumulative FFDI at most stations reasonably well, with most biases in the FFDI ranging between –600 and 600. Biases were highest at stations within the metropolitan region. The WRF simulated the geographical gradients in the FFDI across the domain well. The source of errors in the FFDI varied markedly between the different stations, with no one particular variable able to account for the errors at all stations. Overall, this study shows that the WRF is a useful model for simulating fire weather for SWWA, one of the most fire-prone regions in Australia.

show abstract

WRF and SFIRE simulations of the Layman fuel reduction burn

Cited by 4 publications

References 4 publications

Climatology of wind changes and elevated fire danger over Victoria, Australia

Climatology of wind changes and elevated fire danger over Victoria, Australia

Coupled Atmosphere‐Fire Simulations of the Black Saturday Kilmore East Wildfires With the Unified Model

Evaluation of the Weather Research and Forecasting model in simulating fire weather for the south-west of Western Australia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About