For Official Use Only Bureau of Meteorology submission to the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee Inquiry on lessons to be learned in relation to the preparation and planning for, response to and recovery efforts following the 2019-20 Australian bushfire season May 2020 For Official Use Only Bureau of Meteorology Submission to the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee's Inquiry on lessons to be learned in relation to the preparation and planning for, response to and recovery efforts following the 2019-20 Australian bushfire season. The Bureau of Meteorology (the Bureau) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Committee. The Bureau of Meteorology The Bureau of Meteorology is Australia’s national weather, climate and water information agency. It operates under the authority of the Meteorology Act 1955 (Cth) and the Water Act 2007 (Cth), which together describe a range of functions that underpin delivery of information, advice, forecasts, warnings and associated services to meet Australia’s needs. The Bureau is an Executive Agency under the Public Service Act 1999 (Cth), and a non-corporate Commonwealth entity under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (Cth). The Bureau operates under the Agriculture, Water and the Environment portfolio and reports to the Minister for the Environment generally, and to the Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia on water matters. The Bureau also provides weather, climate and water information to the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management. Responses to Terms of Reference Terms of Reference 1: (a) advice provided to the Federal Government, prior to the bushfires, about the level of bushfire risk this fire season, how and why those risks differed from historical norms, and measures that should be taken to reduce that risk in the future; Advice provided to the Federal Government, prior to the bushfires, about the level of bushfire risk this fire season The Bureau provided more than 100 briefings/presentations relevant to bushfire risk to Federal, State and Territory governments across Australia between 1 April 2019 and 30 November 2019. These included briefs to all levels of government and presentations to fire agencies, including to the Commissioners and Chief Officers Strategic Committee of the Australian Fire and Emergency Services Authority Council (AFAC), co-chaired by the Department of Home Affairs - Emergency Management Australia (EMA). Attachment A provides a summary of some of the key presentations given, together with the audiences they were presented to. Federal Government briefings The Bureau's role is to provide scientific information and analysis to a wide range of commonwealth government agencies, which in turn informs policy decisions that are considered by the Government. The Bureau may provide decision support at the agency level, however much of the decision-making process falls outside the purview of the Bureau itself. It is standard 1 practice for the Bureau to provide the Minister for the Environment (the Minister) advanced copies of these publications for information and awareness. The following bushfire related publications were provided: • The joint Bureau-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) State of the Climate Report 2018 1. In December 2018 an in-person briefing was conducted, with the then Minister for the Environment, the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology and representatives from the Bureau and CSIRO. The State of the Climate 2018 demonstrated there has been a long-term increase in extreme fire weather, and in the length of the fire season, across large parts of Australia since the middle part of the twentieth century. • Routinely, the Minister is provided with copies of climate outlooks prior to public release. The Bureau has issued these seasonal climate outlooks since 1989. Since spring 2019, the Bureau has issued rainfall and temperature outlooks 2 for timescales of two weeks, up to four months in advance. These outlooks are updated on the public website weekly, and are shared across all levels of Government, contained in regular briefs and widely subscribed to through various channels. The Bureau hosts a subscription service that ministerial staff and senior public servants avail themselves of, to regularly receive outlooks and other updates from the Bureau. o The outlooks correctly predicted above average temperatures during spring 3 and the first half of summer 4, with a continuation or worsening of dry conditions in eastern parts of Australia most affected by fires. These dry and warm conditions exacerbated the severe drought conditions and established the antecedent conditions for the bad fire season and contributed to individual bad fire weather days. • In spring 2019, information about severe weather conditions in Queensland and New South Wales was provided by way of the Special Climate Statement 71 5.Two Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook forecasts for the 2019-20 season that were issued by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNHCRC)were provided, the first in August 2019 6 and the second in December 2019 7. These forecasts utilised Bureau input on drought conditions and seasonal outlooks for temperature, rainfall and other key parameters. These forecasts showed increased bushfire risk across most of eastern Australia as well as part of South Australia (including Kangaroo Island) and parts of the coastal region of southwestern 1 http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/ 2 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/outlooks/archive.shtml 3 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/outlooks/archive/20190829-outlook.shtml 4 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/outlooks/archive/20191121-outlook.shtml 5 http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs71.pdf 6 https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/hazardnotes/63 7 https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/hazardnotes/68 2 Australia. The August 2019 release included a press conference 8 where fire agencies noted the Bureau's critical involvement, and expressed their concerns about the season ahead. • In September 2019, a published article 9 noting unusual patterns over the Antarctic which significantly raised the likelihood of a hot and dry spring and summer, including increased bushfire risk was provided. The article received a direct readership in excess of 600,000. This article was based on a Bureau-led research project that was accepted for publication 10 in the journal Nature Geoscience in August 2019 State and Territory Government briefings In the first half of November 2019, the Bureau provided long-range predictions 11 of the Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) to State and Territory fire management agencies around Australia, based on a project managed by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre. These briefings were made available to Fire and Emergency Services as part of the AFAC/BNHCRC Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook but were not distributed more widely noting that they were an input into the outlook process. These predictions indicated more dangerous conditions than normal for November and December 2019 throughout many regions of Australia, with conditions becoming closer to normal during January 2020, and less dangerous than normal in many regions during February 2020. The December 2019 outlook from the BNHCRC which benefit from these outlooks showed a similar outlook for the forested areas of eastern Australia. A report on changes in fire season severity was produced for the New South Wales Regional Fire Services (RFS) by the Bureau in September 2018 (Climate Change and Bushfire Risk in New South Wales, 2018), and followed by a similar report for the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services (QFES) in September 2019 (Climate Change and Bushfire Risk in Queensland, 2019). These reports were produced under the auspices of the AFAC Climate Change Working Group. The Earth Systems and Climate Change (ESCC) Hub under the National Environmental Science Programme (NESP) also developed a consolidated report on Climate Change and Bushfire weather 12 noting the increasing severity of fire seasons affecting Australia. How and why the bushfire risk in 2019/20 differed from historical norms The dangerous fire weather conditions during spring 2019 are consistent with long term increases in extreme fire weather seen in many areas of the country, arising from increasing temperatures and reduced cool season rainfall. In addition to these long-term trends, the 2019/20 fire season was particularly severe because of the coincidence of several less systemic factors. In recent years projections of bushfire risk factors in the future climate have been led by the Bureau and CSIRO, with results showing increased values of the FFDI in the future based on a 8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYxUTi5ybS0 9 https://theconversation.com/the-air-above-antarctica-is-suddenly-getting-warmer-heres-what-it-means-for- australia-123080 10 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0456-x 11 https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/research/firepredictiontools 12 http://nespclimate.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2019/11/A4_4pp_brochure_NESP_ESCC_Bushfires_FINAL_Nov11_2019_WEB.pdf 3 comprehensive range of modelling approaches 13 . The results also show an increase in risk factors associated with dangerous fire generated convection events 14 in many parts of southern and southeast Australia. In extreme cases, this can include fire generated thunderstorms (pyrocumulonimbus events)