- Title:
-
Climate Change Impacts on Fire Weather in Southeast Australia
- Date:
- December 2005
- Organisations
- CSIRO
- Authors:
- K. Hennessy, C. Lucas N. Nicholls J. Bathols, R. Suppiah and J. Ricketts
Overview
Fire risk is influenced by a number of factors – including fuels, terrain, land management, suppression and weather. This study assesses potential changes to one of these factors, fire-weather risk, associated with climate change. Fire-weather risk relates to how a combination of weather variables influences the risk of a fire starting or its rate of spread, intensity or difficulty of suppression. The study is based in south-east Australia, an area projected to become hotter and drier under climate change. The study uses fire danger indices, such as the Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) and Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI), to provide an indication of fire risk based on various combinations of weather variables. These variables include daily temperature, precipitation, relative humidity and wind-speed.
