Published works

The Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS) Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model has been coupled to a fire spread prediction model called ACCESS-Fire (Monash and Melbourne universities, publication in preparation). The ACCESS-Fire model presents a coupled fire-atmosphere modelling capability that is linked to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's operational weather forecasting system. 

The fire spread code in ACCESS-Fire is implemented by a level set solver and includes several fire spread models, including options for Rothermel, McArthur and CSIRO forest and grassland. It uses high-resolution topography and detailed fuel maps can be included as available. The sensible and latent heat energy fluxes from the fire are passed back to the atmospheric code through the land-surface scheme JULES. The fire model has been built into the ACCESS high-resolution nested suite using an advanced graphical user and scheduler interface.

ACCESS-Fire simulations have been run on the Waroona fire, which burnt over 68,000 ha south of Perth in January 2016. Over 160 homes were destroyed and there were two fatalities. During the first two days of the fire, there were four episodes of extreme fire behaviour. Two separate pyrocumulonimbus events developed and two evening ember storms occurred. The fire behaviour at the Waroona fire was driven by three dimensional fire-atmosphere interactions, and such processes can be examined using a coupled fire-atmosphere model.

This paper will describe key features of the coupled fire-atmosphere model ACCESSFire and present results from simulations of the Waroona fire. Features of the simulations include fire-modified winds in the environmental flow, dynamic plume effects near steep topography and exploration of pyrocumulonimbus processes.