BIOMASS BURNING SIG WORKSHOP

The 2019-2020 bushfire season

Thursday 3 December, 2020

The Biomass Burning SIG would like to invite members and all other interested people to a virtual Biomass Workshop focused on the 2019-2020 bushfire season. This will follow on from the previous day’s meeting in New Zealand on ‘Particulates from woodsmoke’, which has a focus on woodburners/woodheaters.

The 2019-2020 bushfire season in Australia was unprecedented, both from the scale of the fires and from the smoke impacts. The jurisdictional EPAs and equivalents, Health Departments and researchers were faced with extensive challenges in the monitoring, reporting, and communication of air quality information. The events also provided research opportunities across many fields, albeit with very limited preparation time. This CASANZ Biomass Burning SIG workshop is an opportunity to review the season and to contemplate the future in an informal on-line gathering, to share information and ideas.

The workshop presenters are:

Session 1: Air quality data and health categories

• The impacts of exceptional region-wide bushfire smoke events in 2019/2020 – Queensland’s experience 
  Tahlia Duncan and Steven Torr (DES Qld)
• Air quality in New South Wales across 2019-20 bushfire season, chronology of events, emergency monitoring and instrument comparison
  Stephen White et al  (DPIE NSW) 
• “Coming a distant Second” a look at what happened with pollutants other than Particulate Matter during the bushfires
  Ian Fox (ACT Health)
• 2019-2020 Bushfire smoke in South Australia
  Pushan Shah (EPA SA)
•  Life in the far-field – Tasmania and the 2020 summer bushfire smoke
  John Innis (EPA Tas)

• Nationally consistent hourly fine particle (as PM2.5) concentration categories with health messaging and recommended actions
  Paul Torre  and Martine Dennekamp (EPA Vic), Matt Riley (DPIE NSW)

Session 2: Modelling, citizen science, chemical composition

• Social Media, Accurate Low-Cost PM2.5 Sensors and Bushfire Protection
  Dorothy Robinson (Armidale Council, NSW)
• The chemical composition of Australian bushfire smoke and implications for population exposure during the 2019/2020 black summer bushfire crisis
  Clare Murphy (UOW, pre-recorded video)
• Smoke forecasting using AQFx for the 2019-2020 summer bushfires
  Fabienne Reisen (CSIRO) et al (CSIRO and BOM)
• 2019/2020 Victorian Bushfire Forecasting Response
  Jason Choi (EPA Vic)
• Pyrocumulus modelling
  Matthew Pickett (Jacobs)
• NSW DPIE Smoke Modelling and Forecasting Capabilities
  Lisa Chang  et al (NSW DPIE)