Modelling the King Island bushfire smoke

On 11 January 2001 thick smoke was transported behind a cold front from the Lavinia Nature Reserve in the northeast corner of King Island, some 250 km to the northeast (see Fig. 1 for locations) to the Melbourne area. This event led to the highest level of particulate recorded (at the time) in Melbourne since the Ash Wednesday bushfires and the Melbourne Dust Storm of 1983. The smoke from the King Island fire arrived in the Melbourne suburbs during the evening. Earlier that afternoon smoke from a smaller fire at Winchelsea (100 km southwest of Melbourne) arrived with the cold front. The Australian Air Quality Forecasting System (AAQFS) and the Bureau of Meteorology’s operational environmental emergency response system (HYSPLIT) at the time did not include irregular emission sources such as bushfire smoke. To demonstrate the ability of AAQFS and HYSPLIT to model such an event, the systems were re-run at a later date, HYSPLIT with particle tracer sources added at the fire locations and AAQFS utilising a simple emissions module. In this paper we will compare these ‘hindcasts’ with the available observations. As HYSPLIT was not initiated with an emisAust. Met. Mag. 55 (2006) 93-103