Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia

The 2019/20 Black Summer bushfire disaster in southeast Australia was unprecedented: the extensive area of forest burnt, the radiative power of the fires, and the extraordinary number of fires that developed into extreme pyroconvective events were all unmatched in the historical record. Australia’s hottest and driest year on record, 2019, was characterised by exceptionally dry fuel loads that primed the landscape to burn when exposed to dangerous fire weather and ignition. The combination of climate variability and long-term climate trends generated the climate extremes experienced in 2019, and the compounding effects of two or more modes of climate variability in their fire-promoting phases (as occurred in 2019) has historically increased the chances of large forest fires occurring in southeast Australia. Palaeoclimate evidence also demonstrates that fire-promoting phases of tropical Pacific and Indian ocean variability are now unusually frequent compared with natural variability in preindustrial times. Indicators of forest fire danger in southeast Australia have already emerged outside of the range of historical experience, suggesting that projections made more than a decade ago that increases in climate-driven fire risk would be detectable by 2020, have indeed eventuated. The multiple climate change contributors to fire risk in southeast Australia, as well as the observed non-linear escalation of fire extent and intensity, raise the likelihood that fire events may continue to rapidly intensify in the future. Improving local and national adaptation measures while also pursuing ambitious global climate change mitigation efforts would provide the best strategy for limiting further increases in fire risk in southeast Australia

Observed global changes in sector-relevant climate extremes indices—an extension to HadEX3

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The gridded dataset are available at www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadex3 and at www.climdex.org. In addition, a version is available on the CEDA archive (https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/2bfbdba03d9b423f99cadf404ca2daab). The underlying station indices will be made available on www.climdex.org where we are allowed to do so. For some collections we are not allowed to make the underlying station data public under terms of their licence.Please read abstract in the article.PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY : To be able to assess changes in extreme temperature and rainfall events across the globe, data sets which capture characteristics of these extreme events are required. The use of indices for these characteristics further enables both data sharing and the comparison of events across the world. Extreme events have impacts across human health, our infrastructure and the natural environment. So far there has not been a global product which presents indices which are relevant for different sectors of our society, including health, agriculture and water resources. In this work we present an extension to an existing data set of extremes indices, HadEX3, by including indices defined by the World Meteorological Organization which were developed with sector specific applications in mind. We have used the same approach and methodology, and where possible the same underlying daily temperature and rainfall observations. The temperature indices show changes consistent with global scale warming, with heat wave characteristics showing increases in the number, duration and intensity of these extreme events in most places. The data files are available for use by interested researchers in their work.The Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by DSIT and by the UK-China Research & Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) China under the International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF); Australian Research Council Grant; the Horizon 2020 LANDMARC project; the RED-CLIMA (Red Española e Iberoamericana sobre Variabilidad Climática y Servicios Climáticos en Ecosistemas Terrestres y Marinos: RED-CLIMA) Project from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas LINCGLOBAL CSIC from Spain; National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change Phase 2; the National Coordination for Higher Education and Training (CAPES).https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/23335084hj2024Geography, Geoinformatics and MeteorologySDG-13:Climate actio