A note on fire weather indices
Jason J. Sharples A B C *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A School of Science, UNSW Canberra, ACT, Australia.
B Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, East Melbourne, Vic., Australia.
C ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, UNSW Canberra, ACT, Australia.
* Correspondence to: J.Sharples@adfa.edu.au
International Journal of Wildland Fire 31(7) 728-734 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF21134
Submitted: 4 October 2021 Accepted: 25 May 2022 Published: 19 June 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF.
Abstract
The influence of meteorological conditions on wildfire behaviour and propagation has been recognised through the development of a variety of fire weather indices, which combine information on air temperature, atmospheric moisture and wind, amongst other factors. These indices have been employed in several different contexts ranging from fire behaviour prediction and understanding wildfire potential to identifying conditions conducive to blow-up fires. This paper considers four such indices in the absence of free moisture (i.e. zero rainfall, no dew, etc.) and demonstrates that to a very good approximation, and up to rescaling, all four fire weather indices are equivalent.
Keywords: fire behaviour modelling, fire danger, fire management, model parsimony, simple index.
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