Antinuclear

Fire tornadoes a risk to nuclear facilities, as climate change continues

Turn and burn: the strange world of fire tornadoes December 17, 2012 Rick McRae, ACT Emergency Services Agency and Jason Sharples, UNSW Australia Rick McRae is Researcher at ACT Emergency Services Agency. Jason Sharples is Lecturer, School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences at UNSW Australia.

We’ve all seen footage of out-of-control bushfires sweeping the Australian landscape, burning out hectares of native forest in their wake. But you might not have heard of a fire tornado, let alone seen one.

For many years now researchers have theorised that fire tornadoes could be possible. Now, in studying the 2003 Canberra bushfires, our colleagues and us have shown fire tornadoes do indeed exist.

So what are fire tornadoes? Where do they come from? And what sort of damage can they cause?

Fire thunderstorms

To answer these questions, we first need to understand a separate – but related – phenomenon: fire thunderstorms, also known as pyro-cumulonimbus clouds……….

Tracing the tornado

We showed that the weather conditions the fires were burning in were also suitable for tornado formation. We mapped the damage path, from the air and on the ground and could track the tornado in weather radar data………..

The 2003 Canberra fire tornado

Unlike the fire whirls observed by firefighters, the 2003 Canberra fire tornado was linked to the base of a thunderstorm, lifted off the ground, and then touched down again, three times.

What made this fire different to other fires was the wide range of observations being made as the edge of Australia’s capital was threatened.

They included:………

August 1, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming