Excited to be able to share this comprehensive review on the many ways that climate change is increasing bushfire risk in southeast Australia, just published in @CommsEarth.

Thread 👇 describing what we found:

[paper is open

This was a huge collaborative effort across climate and fire science experts, including from @ClimateExtremes and @BushfireHub, who came together following the #BlackSummer disaster in Australia.

Our review focuses on forest fires in southeast Australia (NSW + ACT + Victoria).

The #BlackSummer fires were unprecedented:

*In their scale (23% of all southeast Australia forests were burnt)

*In their power (for every month of the spring and summer seasons), and

*In the number of fires that developed into extreme pyroconvective events

Climate in SE Australia in 2019 was also the hottest and driest on record.

Regional warming is part of human-caused global warming trend.

Dry conditions were part of a 3-year drought with consecutive winter rain failures. Long-term winter drying trend appears to be emerging.

Dry years in southeast Australia are usually also hot, (and wet years are usually cool), due to land-atmosphere feedbacks.

And years of large bushfires in southeast Australia have clustered in the hot-&-dry quadrant of historical climate conditions