00:00Gemma Plum is a weather presenter and the climate lead at Weather Change.
00:04Gemma, thanks for joining us on the programme.
00:06Are we likely to see fire clouds become a common phenomenon in Europe,
00:11particularly as heat waves get more prolonged and more frequent?
00:16Yeah, at the moment they are rare, they don't happen very often in Europe.
00:19We see them more likely in other parts of the world, for example in Australia or North America.
00:24But as we're seeing heat waves becoming more frequent, intense and longer lasting
00:29because of climate change, we're seeing conditions becoming drier.
00:33So it means that when we see there's an increased risk of wildfires because of those conditions
00:38and then when the wildfires break out, there's a greater risk that they could become
00:41these large extreme wildfires like we're seeing at the moment.
00:44And so the conditions are there, that means that we can then see these pyrocumulonimbus clouds
00:50generating and forming and therefore we could see them generating their own weather
00:54like we're seeing at the moment, yeah.
00:55Fire clouds make wildfires more intense,
00:58but it also seems that maybe they make them more unpredictable and with that harder to fight.
01:04That's right.
01:05So when we see these pyrocumulonimbus clouds, as I say, they generate their own weather.
01:09So there's a few things that they generate.
01:11You mentioned the strong erratic winds.
01:14Well, those can send the embers from the wildfires out in all directions.
01:18So it means that they become unpredictable, the wildfires,
01:21and they become harder to manage as well because of that factor.
01:25But also they can generate lightning and that lightning can cause more wildfires to ignite.
01:31So a combination of the two.
01:33What does it mean for what you do, forecasting, but also for emergency planning and public safety?
01:41I mean, in terms of forecasting, you look for the conditions there,
01:45but they can be tricky to forecast, especially because they're rare in places like Europe.
01:50But because we are seeing conditions that are becoming more conducive for these large extreme wildfires to form,
01:57and we've got a greater risk of seeing these pyrocumulonimbus clouds generating,
02:02it does mean that we need to be aware of them, the risk of them, that that's increasing.
02:06And also we need to think about the planning for those, management as well.
02:10So we need to factor all of that into account when it comes to what's currently happening,
02:14but also for the future of the increased risk of wildfires and the increased risk of these conditions continuing.
02:20Yeah, what can be done long term to prevent wildfires becoming so extreme?
02:27There's a few things.
02:28One of them is communicating the risk to people,
02:32also communicating the risk of why wildfires start.
02:36So a majority of them are started by some sort of human activities.
02:40It's just making people aware of the risks and how maybe they can change the way that they are behaving,
02:47or maybe just think about some of the risks that are there.
02:50But also we need to think about in areas where there is an increased risk of wildfires now,
02:55but also in the future with climate change.
02:57We can think about how we manage the land, how we can put in fire breaks around things,
03:01just in areas where there's a greater risk.
03:03Gemma, thank you.
03:04Gemma Plum, weather presenter and weather and climate lead at Weather Change.
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