I read this thread with interest. Great contributions.
Big Picture, Australia is subject to three global patterns that affect our weather, each with three phases: positive, neutral and negative:
- The El Nino Southern Oscillation, which in a negative phase causes drier weather in northern and eastern Australia. Oscillations from neutral are becoming more extreme and more frequent over time.
- The Indian Ocean Dipole, which in a positive phase causes drier weather in northwestern Australia. Conversely a negative IOD causes increased rainfall in the northwest, which is occasionally channeled south and southeast by subtropical troughs. Last year saw an extreme positive IOD, which has only recently ended. Incidentally positive and negative divergences from neutral are also becoming more extreme over time.
- The Southern Annular Mode, which in a positive phase draws the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties winds further south, carrying rainbearing cold fronts away from southern Australia for weeks or months; but depending on season and ENSO, may conversely cause increased rainfall in eastern Auatralia.
The science and history shows that whenever we have two of these three patterns coinciding, it causes drier weather across large parts of Australia.
This fire season we had a confluence of El Nino for the last few years plus a very positive IOD last year, which has subsequently only recently eased. The result was extremely dry conditions to the extent that soil moisture in parts of southeastern Australia was - and in places still is - zero. The fire season started in southeast QLD in August. The traditional fire season starts in October/November and over time is becoming longer, narrowing the traditional hazard reduction burn window in the cooler months.
A friend recently returned from volunteer work in NT Aboriginal lands with an interesting story to tell. In NT, which incidentally has the largest proportion of Aboriginal land as a percentage of total State/Territory lands, cultural burns aim to burn a quarter of their land p.a. leaving a mosaic pattern of areas of varying fuel load. NT is one of the most lightning struck places on the planet. Fires started by dry lightning will only run as far as the most recently burned area, and when the wind eases overnight, they die out due to a lack of fuel and a lack of wind impetus. NT Aboriginal lands don't have volunteer fire brigades. They don't need them.
There is also the testimony of the first Europeans to explore inland southeast Australia, who described open woodland with fresh green fodder beneath and blackened tree trunks just about everywhere, as evidence of frequent low intensity cultural mosaic burning.They also described nomadic indigenous Australians burning wherever they wandered for firestick farming and as an indication of their location to other Aboriginal bands. Even Watkin Tench recorded in his diary of the almost constant smoke from fires observed as the First Fleet proceeded up the east coast to Botany Bay. That was in January 1788. We'll never know if those fires were from dry lightning or wandering Aboriginal bands or both or in what proportion. But in combination with the eyewitness testimony of Aboriginal fire practices by early Europeans, I question the modern idea that burning in summer is a flat-out no-no. What does the science and Aboriginal tradition have to say? Not sure of the science but our local Dharawal elder reckons that cool, low intensity fires clear the fuel loads and undergrowth of woody weeds, fertilise the land with their ash, promote the growth of fodder for native grazing animals, and the heat and smoke actually promotes rain and heavier dew, which suppresses the fires at night.
In 2016 the NSW Govt cut the NPWS and RFS budgets by over one third. NPWS is responsible for conservation and hazard reduction in NSW public lands, of which hazard reduction burns play a part. The budget cuts resulted in about 400 NPWS staff losing their jobs, mostly rangers. Presumably boots on the ground are essential for mapping fuel loads, planning and executing hazard reduction, and remote area fire fighting. The NPWS has a goal of burning 5% of public lands p.a. This they failed to do in 2016 and 2017. Even though the NPWS chief said they devoted ALL manpower to hazard reduction burns and abandoned their other core role of conservation. From memory I think they met their goal in 2018. Not sure of the figures for 2019. So no conservation work in NSW for the best part of 4 years, in a country with one of the highest extinction rates on the planet. But that's another subject.
Similarly, in recent years VIC has also failed to meet their own hazard reduction burn targets, as recommended by royal commission into previous catastrophic bushfires. This failure to hazard reduction burn in NSW and VIC coincided with an El Nino event and drought in southeast Australia over the same timeframe.
Given the experience in NT, and the records of first European explorers, and acknowledging that relatively flat NT savannah and open woodland is not remote mountainous forested southeast Australia, a goal to burn 5% p.a. of public lands is probably an inadequate target. That translates as a rule of thumb to areas being burned once in 20 years. That's a lot of time for hazardous fuel loads to build. And possibly the window of opportunity to burn in the cooler months is too narrow and also needs to be reconsidered.
Incidentally, QLD does not seem to have suffered nearly as badly as NSW and VIC this fire season. I note that QLD incorporates Aboriginal cultural burns into its land management practices, which is notably absent in NSW and VIC.
I also note eyewitness testimony of fires in the NSW/VIC high country, where areas that did not burn had been heavily grazed by brumbies. The brumby herd has quadrupled in recent years. Many are starving, and the herds are causing environmental damage which will only worsen as their numbers are further concentrated in the unburned areas. They need to be culled, both as a humane measure and an environmental one. However it raises an interesting counter-argument to the lockup of public lands preventing graziers from entering. Perhaps grazing could play its part in hazard reduction, in the absence of the estimated billion or more native grazing animals killed in these bushfires.
Additionally, locals in northern NSW forests note the change in forest composition over the last few decades. Poor (too intense) selective logging practices in State forests have resulted in a proliferation of palm trees, which in turn drop highly flammable fronds. These forests don't usually burn and are therefore not adapted to fire, however a combination of drought and fuel loads from palm fronds have set them up for destruction.
A colleague who lives inland of Port Macquarie applied to the local RFS to hazard reduction burn on his property last winter. He was told to fill in a bunch of forms and they'd be able to assist in 18 months. He spent the next 4 months hand-clearing a foot deep layer of fuel from the forest clearing in which his property is located, and the surrounding forest. His efforts saved his house and outbuildings. I heard on the radio one South Coast farmer complain he's still waiting for approval from the relevant NSW Govt department to hazard reduction burn on his own property... three years after appplying. THREE ******* YEARS? He lost his entire property in the recent fires. Anecdotally there's clearly an issue in NSW with bureaucracy and resourcing for hazard reduction.
Former fire chief Greg Mullins stated that State Fire Chiefs were not being honest with their Governments about what they needed right now, because they knew that in a bureaucratic game of get-square, they would have their funding in future years cut by the bureaucracies if they were to ask for more resources and funding now.
As to the role of the Federal Govt:
- A business case to increase funding for the National Aerial Firefighting Centre (which in turn sources aerial firefighting assets nationally and internationally) went nowhere for 18 months. Until of course the Federal Govt suffered harsh criticism for the failure to act, then it gets kicked through in a jiffy.
- The Labor Party at the last election promised $60 million to establish a (presumably Federal) permanent aerial firefighting unit of large air tankers and trained smoke jumpers (firefighters using dry methods to fight newly initiated fires). The Coalition failed to match it.
- The PM refused to meet current and former fire chiefs in March 2019, who sought to warn him of the impending fire season, presumably out of some misguided ideological resistance to any discussion of the role of climate change in natural disaster.
- Around the same time, the fire chiefs requested ADF assistance but were told by the PM words to the effect "The ADF fight wars, not bushfires". They weren't asking the ADF to fight the fires but to provide the many and varied support roles at which they excel. Meanwhile, I've read that the ADF were champing at the bit to assist and have been wargaming catastrophic bushfires.
- Joint Federal-State agency co-operation on bushfire response was cancelled in mid-2018.
- Meetings of Federal heads of department to discuss bushfire and national emergency response were halted.
- Federal department research on bushfires and other national weather / climate change related emergencies was never brought to ministers attention out of fear of funding to the programs being cut.
- The PM went AWOL at the height of a national emergency and his office failed to communicate the delegation of national leadership to the Invisible Man, deputy PM McCormack.
- When the PM finally mobilises the ADF and calls up the Reserves, no-one told the NSW Fire Commissioner. He finds out via the TV news. Then the PM blames the NSW Premier for failing to communicate it, having previously told the public that he was communicating directly with the State Fire Chiefs.
WHAT THE **** HAS AUSTRALIA COME TO?
To paraphrase ABC radio commentator Josh Szeps, if the country had come under attack by a foreign power that killed dozens of people, thousands of livestock and a billion native animals, destroyed hundreds of homes, businesses, farms and other buildings, thousands of km of fencing, and millions of hectares of lands, we would have called on allies to resist the attack, and to assist much sooner. I'd add if our Governments had *******-WELL LISTENED to the warnings we would have been vastly more prepared.
So in summary this fire season we had an extremely dry landscape and high fuel loads. This fire season was always going to be bad. Once the blazes were up and running, nothing was going to stop them. But we had governments manifestly unprepared for a situation that was predicted well in advance, and a landscape just waiting for the right conditions to explode. And those conditions eventuated. But it didn't have to be this way!
So the questions are:
- Would the fires have had the same intensity, causing the fires to crown, resulting in such devastatingly hot fires, with resultant convection producing massive updrafts to carry embers for kilometres and creating pyroCN, in turn igniting more fires; and dragging in their own strong inflows, further fanning the flames, had hazard reduction been far more widespread? I think the answer is no.
- Would they have been so numerous and widespread if we had remote IR sensing provided by satellite and ADF Global Hawks etc; dedicated quick response smoke jumper teams and a full suite of nationally and internationally sourced aerial assets to extinguish remote fires early before they grew to enormous size? I think the answer there is also a resounding no.
Unfortunately with regard to fuel loads, the genie is out of the bottle. We'll just have to wait until cooler months, and we receive widespread rainfall, and adequately research and resource hazard reduction burns in areas of mapped extremely high fuel loads.
From this thread it seems that contrary to my "belief" that LATs and other aerial firefighting assets were very effective, surprisingly the "evidence" is they actually aren't as effective as they look. It sure looks good on the news though. Very dramatic. Great for morale. But more of a niche asset. That said, there seems to be a place for them in a national firefighting system of systems. As northern and southern hemisphere firefighting seasons get longer and overlap, perhaps there's a place for a Federally funded sovereign controlled LAT and VLAT element and smoke jumpers that could either be leased to northern hemisphere countries or utilised in Australia for lighting and controlling widespread hazard reduction burns, and in the rare event of an early bushfire emergency, can be recalled to Australia.
I look forward with hope to the outcome of the recently announced royal commission. Probably misplaced given the almost 60 royal commissions and inquiries in as many years... And still we can't come to terms with fire in our landscape.