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Heat stress during the Black Saturday event in Melbourne, Australia

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Abstract

The Black Saturday bushfire event of February 7, 2009, devastated the state of Victoria, Australia, resulting in 173 deaths. On this day, the maximum temperature in Melbourne (state capital of Victoria, population 4 million people) exceeded 46 °C, there were wind gusts of over 80 km h−1 and the relative humidity dropped below 5 %. We investigated the severe meteorological conditions of Black Saturday and the risk of heat stress and dehydration for the residents of Melbourne. This was through the analysis of weather station data, air pollution data, the apparent temperature (AT) and the COMfort FormulA human energy budget model. A very strong pressure gradient caused hot and dry air to be advected to Melbourne from the desert interior of Australia creating the extreme weather conditions. The AT showed that on Black Saturday, heat stress conditions were present, though underrepresented due to assumptions in the AT formula. Further investigation into the human energy budget revealed that the conditions required a sweating rate of 1.4 kg h−1 to prevent heat accumulation into the body. If sweating stopped, hyperthermia could occur in 15 min. Sensitivity tests indicated that the dry air and strong winds on Black Saturday helped to release latent heat, but the required sweating rate was virtually unattainable for an average person and would result in intense dehydration. Air particulates were at dangerous concentrations in Melbourne on Black Saturday, further intensifying the stresses to the human body. In the future, we recommend that the AT is not used as a thermal comfort measure as it underestimates the physical stress people experience.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the three anonymous reviewers who greatly improved the clarity and message of our work. S. Jacobs would like to thank the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities for providing funding to complete this work. A. Pezza would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council (ARC) through the ARC Discovery Grant number DP120103950 in helping fund parts of this work. The work of S. Jacobs and T. Vihma was supported by the Academy of Finland via the AMICO project (contract 263918).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, 3800, Australia

    Stephanie J. Jacobs

  2. Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

    Timo Vihma

  3. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Alexandre B. Pezza

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  1. Stephanie J. Jacobs
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  2. Timo Vihma
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  3. Alexandre B. Pezza
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Correspondence to Stephanie J. Jacobs.

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Jacobs, S.J., Vihma, T. & Pezza, A.B. Heat stress during the Black Saturday event in Melbourne, Australia. Int J Biometeorol 59, 759–770 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-014-0889-2

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