Fire danger indices historical data from the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) v3.1

Creators: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)

Distributor:: NCI Australia¹

Sponsor:: LE200100040, LIEF Grant

1. NCI Australia

Description

This dataset provides complete historical reconstruction of meteorological conditions favourable to the start, spread and sustainability of fires. The fire danger metrics provided are part of a vast dataset produced by the Copernicus Emergency Management Service for the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). The European Forest Fire Information System incorporates the fire danger indices for three different models developed in Canada, United States and Australia.

The fire danger model used to produce the dataset is publicly available Global ECMWF Fire forecast model (GEFF).

(GEFF). GEFF implements daily predictions of fire danger conditions based on the U.S. Forest Service National Fire-Danger Rating System (NFDRS), the Canadian Forest Service Fire Weather Index Rating System (FWI), and the Australian McArthur (Mark 5) rating systems. In this dataset the fire danger indices are calculated using weather forecast from historical simulations provided by ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis.

ERA5 by combining model data and a vast set of quality controlled observations provides a globally complete and consistent data-set and is regarded as a good proxy for observed atmospheric conditions.

The selected data records in this data set are regularly extended with time as ERA5 forcing data become available.

The reanalysis has a 0.25° x 0.25° degrees spatial resolution, while the mean, spread and members have a 0.5° x 0.5° degrees resolution. Data has daily frequency.

This dataset is produced by ECMWF in its role of the computational centre for fire danger forecast of the CEMS, on behalf of the Joint Research Centre which is the managing entity of the service.

The v3.1 of this dataset is available locally on the NCI server. The files are downloaded from the Climate Data Store (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home) in netcdf format. A more recent version is available from the CDS (v4.0)

For more information on the NCI version see their documentation and Geonetwork record in related identifiers.

The availability of ERA5 data at NCI has been made possible through ARC LIEF Grant LE200100040. The LIEF grant is supported by a collaboration and co-funding involving Monash University, the Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, the University of Tasmania and NCI.