The transport and dispersion of the smoke from the Winchelsea and King Island bushfires, 11 – 12 January 2001 has been simulated by the Australian Air Quality Forecasting System (AAQFS) and the HYSPLIT environmental emergency response system. Thick smoke from these fires led to the highest level of particulate recorded (at the time) in the Melbourne Airshed since Ash Wednesday and the Melbourne Dust Storm of 1983. Although there was some variation over the domain (the strength of the winds on the western side of the bay was underestimated whereas on the eastern side the winds were in agreement with the observations), in general the meteorological model predictions provided very good guidance. The prediction of the AAQFS and HYSPLIT plumes generally show excellent agreement for the location of the major concentrations. Differences in detail in simulating the smoke plumes in the two models are discussed using comparisons with available satellite observations. The ability of AAQFS to capture events such as the transport of elevated smoke down to the surface by turbulent mixing is also demonstrated.
HESS et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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