Bushfires occur in Australia every summer, but in recent years they are getting out of control. Increased rainfall over the past three years intensified the growth of plants that fuel the fire. And a dry and warm winter across much of Australia in 2023 made this fuel extremely dry and flammable.

Australian authorities have been warning for months that this cocktail of conditions means this bushfire season will be extremely dangerous. More than 100 fires were burning across the country on Thursday 26 October, with Queensland authorities reporting that two people had died near the town of Tara. The actual fire season is yet to come, with calendar summer starting in Australia in December.

On 25 October, overnight dry thunderstorms sparked several new fires in the same region. The Queensland Fire and Emergency Services reported that around 350 people had been evacuated from the Tara area, where an out-of-control fire has so far burned more than 11,000 hectares of land and destroyed 16 homes.

Anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change has meant that Australia's climate has warmed by about 1.47 degrees Celsius over the past 110 years, leading to longer fire seasons. Not only have bushfires become more likely and intense due to climate change, but they have also started to contribute to the climate crisis.

Until Australia's record-breaking 2019-2020 bushfire season, it was thought that forests were re-absorbing carbon released during fires across the country. This would mean that fires did not cause additional CO2 emissions. However, global warming is causing the bush to burn more often and more intensely. According to the Copernicus emissions monitoring programme, fires emitted 400 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the 2019-2020 season.

Source: bbc.com