LITTLE was known about freak weather phenomena like fire tornadoes or "violent pyroconvection" when suburbs on Canberra's outskirts were engulfed by bushfires in 2003.
But understanding has improved greatly since those January blazes killed four people and destroyed more than 500 homes and businesses in the nation's capital.
Australian scientists and international researchers have since discovered several rare climate events occurred during that firestorm, and hope their findings will help firefighters save lives.
On Thursday some of the research will be presented at the CSIRO Discovery Centre in the city where the disaster unfolded.
Scientist Rick McRae hopes their discoveries will help "pull apart the true story of what was going on" in January 2003.
"It was a very unusual day," Mr McRae, special risk analyst with the ACT Emergency Services Agency, said of January 18, 2003.
"Back 10 years ago, a lot of this stuff really was poorly known, if known at all."
Mr McRae garnered attention last year when he and other scientists documented the first-ever confirmed case of a "fire tornado" using evidence from the Canberra fires.
Canberra "got the ball rolling" as researchers from across the globe studied the other unusual weather phenomena that occurred during the blazes, he said.
They've now identified several examples of "violent pyroconvection", or events that create dynamics in the atmosphere above a fire that dominate what's going on on the ground.
One was the formation of massive thunderstorms in the smoke cloud known as "pyrocumulonimbus" that can cause rain, hail and lightning.
Another was the discovery of "fire channelling", where a blaze rapidly spreads in two directions at once.
Researchers have since identified this extreme fire pattern as having occurred not only at Canberra but during the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria and blazes this month in Warrumbungle National Park in NSW.
It could even be taking place right now in fires around Harrietville in Victoria, Mr McRae added.
"We've seen the signature of this in a lot of the dangerous fires, both in Australia and the United States and elsewhere," he said.
By understanding how and why a fire takes a dangerous turn, fire crews can maximise their safety as they battle blazes, Mr McRae added.
"With the increase in science and the increase in knowledge about what makes bad fires bad, we're learning a lot more about how to better protect our communities," he said.
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