The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is undertaking a regional reanalysis of Australia and its surrounds in a project called BARRA (Bureau of Meteorology Atmospheric high-resolution Regional Reanalysis for Australia). The reanalysis programme includes a number of subdomains for which higher resolution downscaling has occurred. Within the subdomains, hourly fields of meteorological and associated parameters have been generated at 1.5 km horizontal resolution. These datasets present an unprecedented opportunity for the investigation of many atmospheric and associated parameters which have not previously been available with such definition.
The subdomain reanalyses, in particular, have been generated with support from fire and emergency service organisations around Australia. In the case of Tasmania, several State Government agencies acted in unison to support the project, with the expectation that the resulting datasets would be of use for emergency management and preparedness. We examine the BARRA Tasmanian subdomain wind dataset to provide an initial assessment of its value for emergency services. Wind is of concern for emergency managers for a variety of reasons. It is a key variable in fire management, contributing to fire rate of spread and level of activity, and therefore the impact of fire on people, assets and natural values. Wind is, of course, also capable of causing widespread disruption and damage to life and property in its own right. We describe aspects of a wind climatology derived from BARRA, highlighting coastal regions at risk of high winds, regions typically exposed to lee downslope winds, and areas at high fire risk as a result, in particular, of characteristic wind patterns. We briefly discuss specific cases of emergency management-related wind events, included those resulting in both small- and regional-scale impacts.