Writings on climate change, sea level rise, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, climate adaptation & protests from a Melbourne Citizen Journalist.

Early Fire season started this weekend in SE Queensland.

The landscape is relatively dry at the moment," Mr Bass added… “We haven’t had to deal with too many fires and too many … active fire conditions for the last couple of years, actually, with La Niña hanging around,” Mr Bass said. " Finally, Australia had a map for its journey toward adapting to fires and other natural disasters."

After the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria that killed 173 people and destroyed around 2,000 homes, fire services added a new category of fire danger: “Catastrophic”, because it was becoming increasingly common to exceed the theoretical maximum fire danger index of 100 (Australian Academy of Science 2021).

This is because weather conditions have become hotter, drier and windier on the worst fire weather days over recent decades.