Interpretation of seasonal fire outlooks

The Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS) is a nationally consistent approach to forecasting fire danger for all major vegetation types found in Australia. AFDRS climate outlooks (Fire Danger Outlooks, FDOs) extending out to 3 months ahead are the first such operational products of their kind in the world. The products use the Bureau’s seasonal model Australian Community Climate Earth simulator – Seasonal (ACCESS-S2). The FDOs are currently available to fire agencies, and partner agencies involved in land management and fire prevention activities. To make sound planning decisions, climate outlooks should be used with other sources of intelligence to understand which components of the outlooks might be driving risk. It is prudent to consult temperature and rainfall outlooks with the FDOs as both these are contributing factors to fire danger conditions, but the FDOs have differing data foundations (hindcast periods) that need to be understood for correct interpretation. Previous comparative analysis showed the AFDRS hindcast period is warmer during the shoulder seasons for some regions; thus, a high chance of above average temperature might not be reflected as expected in the AFDRS outlooks. For this reason, it has been important to provide users with advice on how to best interpret the FDOs alongside the temperature outlooks. In this work, we continued the comparative analysis to determine how the rainfall differs over the hindcast periods and the subsequent operational implications when interpreting the outlooks in a strategic planning context.