The principal objective of the project was to extend and improve the New Zealand fire climatology analysis undertaken by Pearce (1996). This study comprised three main steps: compilation of a database of daily fire weather records for each weather station by replacing missing or erroneous values with suitable data from appropriate substitute stations; recalculation of Fire Weather Index (FWI) System and associated fire danger class values from the completed weather input datasets; and statistical analysis of long-term average and extreme (min/max) values of weather and fire danger components for each weather station.

The principal output from the analysis is a summary table for each of the 127 stations containing the long-term average and extreme values of each of the weather FWI system components summarised by month, fire season and year. In addition, the summary tables include fire danger class frequencies for forest and scrubland vegetation types, also by month, fire season and year.

Summary statistics for each station were used to identify the individual weather stations and geographic regions with the most severe fire climates.