Comparison of Wildfire Meteorology and Climate at the Adriatic Coast and Southeast Australia

Abstract

Wildfire is one of the most complex natural hazards. Its origin is a combination of anthropogenic factors, urban development and weather plus climate factors. In particular, weather and climate factors possess many spatiotemporal scales and various degrees of predictability. Due to the complex synergy of the human and natural factors behind the events, every wildfire is unique. However, there are indeed common meteorological and climate factors leading to the high fire risk before certain ignition mechanismfigures occur. From a scientific point of view, a better understanding of the meteorological and climate drivers of wildfire in every region would enable more effective seasonal to annual outlook of fire risk, and in the long term, better applications of climate projections to estimate future scenarios of wildfire. This review has performed a comparison study of two fire-prone regions: southeast Australia including Tasmania, and the Adriatic coast in Europe, especially events in Croatia. The former is well known as part of the ‘fire continent’, and major resources have been put into wildfire research and forecasting. The Adriatic coast is a region where some of the highest surface wind speeds, under strong topographic effect, have been recorded and, over the years, have coincided with wildfire ignitions. Similar synoptic background and dynamic origins of the meso-micro-scale meteorological conditions of these high wind events as well as the accompanied dryness have been identified between some of the events in the two regions. We have also reviewed how the researchers from these two regions have applied different weather indices and numerical models. The status of estimating fire potential under climate change for both regions has been evaluated. This review aims to promote a global network of information exchange to study the changing anthropogenic and natural factors we have to confront in order to mitigate and adapt the impacts and consequences from wildfire.

Keywords

• fire weather
• fire regimes
• wildland–urban interface
• multiscale drivers
• coupled fire–atmosphere models