A seasonal view of bushfire

Strategic decisions on resources, prescribed fire management and community warnings have for the past 16 years been underpinned by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’s Seasonal Bushfire Outlook.

Governments and fire authorities are using the Outlook for planning purposes in the lead-up to their bushfire seasons, including refining their public messages that communicate bushfire risk and highlight areas with the highest potential for fire.

The Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC leads the preparation of the Outlook in close consultation with the Bureau of Meteorology, AFAC, and emergency service agencies in each state and territory.

The earlier Outlooks covered only the Southern fire season and was released annually around September at the CRC and AFAC annual conference. Later, a Northern outlook was added around June, and also an update to the Southern outlook around November. In 2020, the Outlook shifted to a regular national quarterly release to better reflect the year-round nature of fire management and operations across Australia.

The Outlooks serve a range of purposes and are a critical component in raising community awareness about the coming fire season. A well-attended and widely broadcast media event with all of Australia’s fire chiefs is held annually at the AFAC Conference as part of the statement’s public release providing a timely opportunity to reach the community and other stakeholders. In recent years, as testament to the growing reliance on the Outlook, the launch has been livestreamed on ABC, Sky and other media channels, and followed up with extensive media coverage across print, radio, television and online.

The fire Outlooks began in 2006 under a Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre project with Dr Graham Mills from the Bureau of Meteorology, drawing on experience from the US through Dr Tim Brown, of the Desert Research Institute. The primary information in the product consists of a map of seasonal “bushfire potential”, with extensive commentary and maps of climate conditions and forecasts. Areas where the fire potential is below normal, normal or above normal are shown in three colours.

The outlooks are prepared at workshops by integrating climate forecasts with extensive knowledge of the current fuel state and previous fire seasons to produce an overview for the upcoming fire season. The workshops consider the weather, landscape conditions and cross-border implications leading into the main fire season.

Fire season potential depends on many factors. Rainfall amount, location and timing of rainfall in the period leading up to the fire season are critically important, and contribute to fuel loads, dryness and fuel availability. The temperature and rainfall outlooks for the next few months are crucial factors for influencing the development of fire potential. The actual impact of fire within a season will depend on exposure to assets (such as houses and other infrastructure) and to people, community preparedness, the availability of firefighting resources and more random factors such as ignition sources. Fuel loads show much variability and are a product of past fire history, rainfall over one or more preceding seasons and land use, such as grazing and agriculture.

The Seasonal Bushfire Outlook is used by governments and fire authorities to make strategic decisions on resource planning and prescribed fire management for the upcoming fire season. How agencies and governments make use of the statement for planning, and its influence on decisions varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. One key use is as a tool to justify significant investment in resources such as additional firefighters, vehicles and aircraft. Another is to increase community preparedness campaigns in areas of high likelihood of fire.

The Outlook is widely distributed among related organisations and community groups for local use. The Australia Red Cross uses the Outlook to produce hazard and vulnerability data maps for its Emergency Services Managers around Australia as part of its seasonal preparedness planning so resources can be shifted to areas with higher fire potential. ABC Emergency uses the Outlook to schedule training sessions for its journalists working in potentially hazardous areas around the country based on the priorities highlighted by the Outlook.