Queensland fire contribution awarded

CRC researcher Dr Mika Peace from the Bureau of Meteorology has been acknowledged with an award for her work during the 2018 November/December Queensland bushfires.

Dr Peace received the Bureau of Meteorology’s CEO’s Choice Excellence award for the delivery of exceptional impact and value to emergency management customers and to the people of Queensland.  She was presented with her award recently by the Bureau’s Director of Meteorology Dr Andrew Johnson.

During the Queensland bushfires, Dr Peace was deployed to Queensland to provide expertise on fire weather. Based at the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services control centre in Brisbane,

Dr Peace worked closely with fire behaviour analysts to provide expert insight and specialised knowledge on fire weather. Dr Peace’s specialised knowledge on fire weather gave QFES expert insight, particularly around the potential for pyrocumulonimbus (bushfire thunderstorms) to form, which can profoundly change the way bushfires behave.

After the bushfires, the Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, invited Dr Peace to attend the Christmas Cabinet Reception as a thank you, alongside the many others who assisted during the bushfires.

Dr Peace is a lead researcher for the project Coupled fire-atmosphere modelling.