Abstract
Abstract. Extreme fires have substantial adverse effects on society and natural ecosystems. Such events can be associated with the 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 min 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, the latter of which is 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 min period on the afternoon of 4 January, with the cloud top reaching a height of 15 km. The pyroCb was associated with a highly unstable lower atmosphere (C-Haines value of 10–11) and severe–marginally extreme (FFDI 60–75) near-surface fire weather, and it 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 from 2007 to 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 they highlight the vulnerability of south-east Tasmania to extreme fire events.
Highlights
Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the occurrence of dangerous fire weather conditions globally (Jolly et al, 2015; Abatzoglou et al, 2019), leading to high-intensity wildland fires
At 12:00 local time (LT), the Forcett–Dunalley plume was again detectable by weather radar (Figs. 2, 3a), when values of the weather variables peaked and were maintained during the period of violent pyroconvection between 15:24 and 16:30 LT (Fig. 2)
The Forcett–Dunalley firestorm developed in the late afternoon – a pattern similar to all reported Australian pyrocumulonimbus clouds (pyroCb) (Fromm et al, 2006; Dowdy et al, 2017; Peace et al, 2017; Terrasson et al, 2019), except the 2006 Grose Valley pyroCb in New South Wales (Fromm et al, 2012) and a second Waroona pyroCb event (Peace et al, 2017), which occurred in the late morning
Summary
Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the occurrence of dangerous fire weather conditions globally (Jolly et al, 2015; Abatzoglou et al, 2019), leading to high-intensity wildland fires. Sharples et al, 2016), but the associated behaviour includes rapid spread ( > 50 m min−1), high fireline intensity (> 10 000 kW m−1), long distance spotting, erratic behaviour, and impossibility of control, often with the associated development of violent pyroconvection (Tedim et al, 2018). Ndalila et al.: Evolution of a pyrocumulonimbus event associated with an extreme wildfire reach the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, and can inject aerosols into altitudes where they can be transported for thousands of kilometres and, affect global climate (Trentmann et al, 2006; Fromm et al, 2010; Peterson et al, 2018). Violent convection is defined here as strong, highly turbulent and deep convection
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