Professor Jason Sharples, director of the University of NSW Bushfire Research Group, will give the public lecture at Noah's On The Beach, in an event hosted by the Hunter Branch of the Royal Society of NSW, at 4pm on June 30. Tickets are available online.

The research group aims to improve the understanding of the processes that drive extreme bushfire development and their relation to firefighter and community safety. Professor Sharples has been an expert witness in several Coronial and Parliamentary inquiries.

"The types of behaviours exhibited by these fires are often at odds with traditional approaches to understanding bushfire, which have primarily relied on information gathered during smaller experimental fires in particular types of vegetation," he said.

"In contrast, these fires tend to manifest as violent pyroconvective events, which often share more in common with an atmospheric storm than a surface fire.

"In this talk I will present an overview of recent insights into the occurrence and behaviour of these extreme bushfires and discuss some of the challenges they pose for bushfire risk management."

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