@article {BF-4282,
	title = {A comparison of the fire weather characteristics of the  Melbourne dust storm (1983) and Black Saturday  (2009): a high-resolution ACCESS case study},
	journal = {20th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation},
	year = {2013},
	month = {12/2013},
	pages = {167-172},
	chapter = {167},
	abstract = {We present the results of high-resolution simulations of the fire weather over Melbourne during
its notorious dust storm on 8 February 1983. The simulations were performed using the Australian Community
Climate and Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS), and involved a sequence of nested model runs starting
with a global model run initialised with an ERA-Interim reanalysis initial condition. The ACCESS model
is used at the Bureau of Meteorology for operational numerical weather prediction, but is used here in research
mode at resolutions much finer than those currently used operationally.
The day of the dust storm saw the passage of a significant cool change across Victoria, with many similarities
in the simulations to that of Black Saturday (7 February 2009), against which we compare it. Wind changes
such as these two can have a significant (and dangerous) impact on the behaviour of bushfires in southeast
Australia, and their prediction forms an important component of fire weather prediction in this part of the
country. While the wind change on 8 February 1983 was accompanied by some fire activity, that activity was
much less than the major fire activity which accompanied the significant wind change eight days later on Ash
Wednesday (16 February 1983).
Why the dust storm wind change was not associated with severe fires, while those on Ash Wednesday and
Black Saturday were, is a challenging question. Catastrophic fires are quite rare, whereas significant fire
weather events that could potentially lead to catastrophic fires (if the non-meteorological prerequisites were
to fall into place) are much more common and their study can lead to further understanding of the fire events.},
	keywords = {Ash Wednesday, Black Saturday, Fire weather, Melbourne{\textquoteright}s dust storm, numerical weather prediction},
	url = {http://www.mssanz.org.au/modsim2013/A3/fawcett.pdf},
	author = {Robert Fawcett and Alan Wain and W. Thurston and Jeffrey Kepert and KJ Tory}
}
