Scientists close to predicting bushfire behaviour
Scientists close to predicting bushfire behaviour
29 January 2010
published by www.abc.net.au
Australia — Scientists are closer to being able to forecast how severe bushfires will behave.
Australian meteorologist Michael Reeder is developing models that map how bushfires interact with weather and the atmosphere.
Mr Reeder has presented his research at the three-day national conference of the australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society in Canberra.
He says the models could help firefighters attack bushfires more effectively and once refined they will be valuable tools.
“Well it has a huge potential for firefighters and also strategic planning, where will you put your resources, how will you tackle the fire?” he said.
“I think that for policy makers that these sort of tools can be used for assessing risk.
“Down the track, when we’ve overcome some of those technical difficulties I think they’ll become hugely valuable.”
But Mr Reeder says there is still some way to go before scientists will be able to predict fire behaviour the way they forecast the weather.
“There are some really big technical problems in doing that for example there are big technical problems in knowing the weather conditions at the time the fire starts,” he said.
“But we are at the stage that we can make a lot of progress in forecasting the spread of the fire, the behaviour of the fire, what’s going to happen.”
