SUMMARY OF WWRP/BMRC/BCRC Fire Weather Workshop

9-10 October 2003

BMRC

Melbourne, Australia

AGREEMENTS ON BILATERAL AND MULTILATERAL COLLABORATION

Short Range Forecasting

Organizations identified: Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre (BMRC), Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Fire Danger Working Team of the U.S. National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG), USDA Forest Service, Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC), and the World Weather Research Program (WWRP)

Focus area 1: Coordinate application of mesoscale modeling technology to support fire operations. Specific focus will be on techniques used by USDA Forest Service in its FCCAMS program and the application of mesoscale model information by BMRC to fire operations.

Facilitators for focus area 1: Mills (BMRC) and Fujioka (USDA Forest Service)

Focus area 2: A collaborative group formed in focus area 1 will generate a proposal for a forecast demonstration project to be submitted to the WWRP.

Facilitators for focus area 2: Mills (BMRC), Fujioka (USDA Forest Service) Keenan (WWRP), and T. Brown (DRI).

Smoke Transport

Collaborating Organizations: BMRC, Bushfire CRC, USDA Forest Service, US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Wildland Fire R&D Collaboratory (WFC)

Focus area 1: Health aspects of smoke on affected populations

Facilitators for focus area 1: Bell/Hess (BMRC), Fujioka (USDA Forest Service), Guenther/Mearns (WFC), Stocks/Lee (US EPA Canadian Fire Service) to be approached.

Focus area 2: Numerical modeling of smoke transport

Facilitators for focus area 2: Bell/Hess (BMRC) and Fujioka/Ferguson (USDA Forest Service)

Focus area 3: Chemistry of smoke plumes

Facilitators for focus area 3: Bell/Hess (BMRC), Fujioka/Missoula Fire Lab (USDA Forest Service), and Karl/Yokelson/Artaxo/Brune (WFC)

Focus area 4: Investigate problem of incorporating residual smoke into initial analyses for model runs and decision support systems.

Facilitators for focus area 4: Bell/Hess (BMRC), Fujioka/Ferguson/Hao (USDA Forest Service), and Wiener/Coen (WFC)

Fire Behaviour

Collaborating Organizations: BMRC, CSIRO, WFC, USDA Forest Service, Monash University, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)

Focus area 1: Develop international collaborative team to focus on understanding fire behaviour through the use of sophisticated coupled numerical models that can better simulate characteristics of high-resolution land use and atmospheric parameters at high resolution.

Facilitators for area 1: CSIRO, Coen (WFC/NCAR), Linn (WFC/LANL)

Focus area 2: Investigate possibility of LANL working with BMRC to use FireTec model to analyze Canberra fires and other fires where good research data exists.

Facilitators for area 2: Keenan (BMRC), Wagoner/Linn (WFC)

Focus area 3: Provide CSIRO with definitive list of required research data set from test fires.

Facilitators for area 3: Gould (CSIRO), Coen (WFC), (BMRC), Weise (USDA Forest Service)

Focus area 4: Investigate use of sophisticated coupled numerical models for educational purposes.

Facilitators for area 4: Griffiths (Monash), Coen/Linn (WFC)

Focus area 5: Develop closer linkages between experimental and numerical modeling research to better understand processes responsible for fire behavior.

Facilitators for area 5: Gould (CSIRO), Weise (USDA Forest Service), Coen (WFC/NCAR), Linn (WFC/LANL), Griffiths (Monash)

Seasonal Range Forecasts/Climate

Collaborating Organizations: BMRC, Canadians (Stocks, et. al), WFC, DRI

Focus area 1: Form a credible group that can analyze impact of climate change on wildfire.

Facilitators for area 1: Nicholls (BMRC), Stocks (& other Canadian PIs), Trenberth/Mearns (WFC), Brown (DRI)

Focus area 2: Can a universal seasonal fire weather potential index be derived?

Facilitators for area 2: Nicholls (BMRC), Brown (DRI), Westerling (Scripps), Fujioka (USDA Forest Service), Mike Flanigan (Canada)

Decision Support Systems

Collaborative Organizations: BMRC, CSIRO, WFC, USDA FS, USBLM

Focus area 1: Collaboration on the design for a user survey to determine specific user needs for DSSs that could be applied in each country.

Facilitators for focus area 1: Keenan (BMRC), Gould (CSIRO), Wagoner/Coen/Wiener (WFC), Weise (USDA Forest Service)

Focus area 2: Share analysis of surveys conducted

Facilitators for focus area 2: Keenan (BMRC), Gould (CSIRO), Wagoner/Coen/Wiener (WFC), Weise (USDA FS), Ochoa (USBLM)

Focus area 3: Investigate possible collaborative design and development of a DSS for a specific group of decision makers (for example, prescribed fire managers) and to meet the needs of countries that have limited to none capabilities to develop own systems

Facilitators for focus area 3: Wagoner (WFC), Keenan (BMRC), Weise (USDA Forest Service), Ochoa (USBLM), J. Goldammer (GFMC)

Economic Analysis of Fire Weather Services

Collaborating Organizations: BMRC, BCRC, USDA Forest Service

Focus area: The new Bushfire CRC is a so called “Public Good” CRC. Quantification of the value of services and improvements in climate and weather information for stakeholders in the fire community that may be developed by the CRC is difficult. Collaboration with other organizations that have conducted economic assessments is desired.

Facilitators: Anderson-Berry (BoM), (BMRC), (BCRC), Riebau (USDA Forest Service)

Focus Area 2 : Socio-economic value of fire weather services: a case study of fire weather information for prescribed burning. The focus of this study is the socio-economic value or benefit of current and improved fire weather services aimed at prescribed burning in the Victorian region and to an assessment of the associated benefits resulting from the better use of fire weather services

Facilitators: Don Gunasekera and Linda Anderson-Berry(BOM)

Scientific Visitors Program in Fire Science & Engineering and International Coordination

Collaborating Organizations: BMRC, BCRC, WFC, USDA Forest Service, Monash University, CSIRO, DRI

Focus area 1: All parties agree that a visitor exchange program (both short term and long term) would greatly enhance collaboration amongst the research and development organizations present at the workshop. Collaborative group listed above will a) determine scope and available resources for their organization and b) suggest rules of engagement to make the program successful.

Facilitators: Manton (BMRC), O’Loughlin (BCRC), Wagoner (WFC), Riebau (USDA Forest Service), Gould (CSIRO), Brown (DRI)

Focus area 2: Undertake coordination, as appropriate in cooperation with existing activities such as those of the International Early Warning Programme under the auspices of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR) and the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) to further development and finance research and technology transfer

Facilitators: Keenan (BMRC), Goldammer (GFMC)

Meeting Agenda

Meeting Participants

Background (Workshop main page)