Subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of bushfire conditions for regional Victoria from climatic

Project Title:

Subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of bushfire conditions for regional Victoria from climatic variables

Supervisor(s):

Dr Savin Chand

Contact person and email address:

A brief description of the project:

Bushfires have devastating consequences on life and property in Victoria - often resulting in destruction of many wild animals, natural bushlands, farms, personal property and irreplaceable family possessions. Substantial progress has been made in the past years to provide day-to-day bushfire warnings up to a week or so in advance using medium-range weather forecast systems. Forecasting bushfire conditions from seasonal to interannual time scale has also improved due to our increased understanding of the patterns, drivers and predictability of slowly-evolving components of the global climate system such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. In between these two time scales is subseasonal variability, which is defined as the time range between two weeks and two months. The overarching aim of the proposed study is to examine subseasonal-to-seasonal predictability of bushfire conditions for Victoria and develop innovative statistical-dynamical approaches to predict large-scale climatic variables that influence bushfire conditions at local scale.