VOLUNTEER firefighters on the frontline could soon be armed with weather reading skills that could save their lives and the lives of landholders in the event of a catastrophic fire.
It’s a matter of highest importance according to climatologist Martin Babakhan, who has made some startling observations based on the weather records of an Armidale pastoralist from the turn of the 20th century.
Dr Babakhan, formerly based in the New England, has begun consulting with the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) to educate frontline firefighters on how the modern climate makes fires more dangerous.
By analysing 44 years of data compiled by the late Algernon Henry Belfield, Dr Babakhan noted differences in the interaction between the Southern Hemisphere’s five weather systems .
Dr Babakhan said Belfield’s records reveal a monsoonal shift, with consequences on the Australian continent.
“The data shows specifically more intense, frequent storms in the Armidale, Tamworth and Gloucester pocket – a change bigger than anywhere else in Australia,” Dr Babakhan said.
“It’s part of a monsoonal shift, and this is the only place in the world where that weather pattern has shifted.”
Belfield recorded not only rainfall and humidity, but temperature and wind speed among 10 parameters in total, at 9am every morning.
These records, taken on “Eversleigh”, Armidale, between 1877 to 1922, are perhaps the most detailed taken by any farmer in Australia during that period.
Dr Babakhan said the shift highlighted by the Belfield journals affects how other weather systems in the Southern Hemisphere interact, including the push and pull of cold Antarctic air and the dry continental air mass over central Australia.
“In the middle of summer, humidity can drop to minus 10 over central Australia which is like nowhere else on the planet – with the Sahara Desert perhaps the only exception,” he said.
“That air mass interacts with the Antarctic and if the dry air mass moves south it can result in fires the likes of which Victoria had in 2009.”
The opposite to this, Dr Babakhan said, was demonstrated when cold Antarctic air occasionally delivered snow to Tasmania and the Snowy Mountains – in the middle of summer.
For those who doubted climate change he said seemingly small changes in temperature could have large ramifications, similar to that of La Nina and El Nino.
“The Indian Pacific and Arctic oceans all surround us with their own weather systems with great interaction,” he said.
Dr Babakhan said based on past events, Australia could expect another dry period in about five years’ time and an even greater fire danger due to increased fuel loads from this wet period.
“Frontline firefighters need to be trained to read the weather because they are on the frontline, they are informing the decisions made in a remote command centre, and I’ve made a submission to NSW RFS to train those volunteers,” he said.
“We’re not training our fire fighters to that level of knowledge.”
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