{"id":829710,"date":"2026-07-28T19:52:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/829710\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T19:52:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:52:52","slug":"how-extreme-weather-in-europe-and-north-america-is-signalling-a-new-era-of-fire-danger-for-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/829710\/","title":{"rendered":"How extreme weather in Europe and North America is signalling a new era of fire danger for Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fires raging across Europe and North America and the rapidly developing El Nino in the Pacific have Australian bushfire authorities looking to the coming fire season in this country \u2013 and the one after that \u2013 with increasing dread.<\/p>\n

Western Europe is facing its fourth heatwave since May, with June being its hottest month in recorded history. The first half of 2026 was the third-hottest in the region\u2019s history, following the same periods in 2025 and 2024, with global warming caused by the global failure to arrest carbon emissions accelerating.<\/p>\n

\"BeachgoersBeachgoers watch the fires in Le Moutchic in Lacanau, south-western France last week.AFP<\/p>\n

As a result, uncontainable fires have seen more than 320,000 people evacuated across Spain and France, while in the UK, firefighters are battling blazes from southern England to northern Scotland, and millions of hectares are ablaze in the United States and Canada.<\/p>\n

Firefighters in Europe are now being confronted with the sort of catastrophic conditions that have become more common over recent years in Australia, with fires becoming large enough to generate pyrocumulonimbus storms, weather systems created by fire that can throw out lightening ahead of fire fronts, said NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Trent Curtin.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hearts go out to those communities and firefighters, particularly where lives are at risk,\u201d said Curtin. \u201cIn parts of Europe, we\u2019re seeing 250,000 hectares that have been burnt since the start of the year. The scale and the enormity of the fires is really, really challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

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La Trobe University climate adaptation specialist Professor Lauren Rickards said the blazes in the northern hemisphere were further evidence that we are collectively heading deeper into an era marked by an increasing number of ferocious fires.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you see something happening, whether it\u2019s Europe or California, you understand that it\u2019s not a coincidence, it\u2019s actually an indication that our shared common system is shifting, it\u2019s tilting towards a more fiery existence,\u201d Rickards said.<\/p>\n

NSW RFS firefighting crews are already on the ground in the United States and more are heading to Canada on Thursday, Curtin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we received a request from Europe, then we\u2019d be willing and able to support with our expertise to support them in their time of need.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lengthening fire seasons across the world are making it harder for firefighting agencies to share resources around the world, Curtin said, particularly as demand for firefighting aircraft and trained crews is increasing. But he said NSW was served by its own air fleet and did not depend on aircraft from North America.<\/p>\n

Greg Mullins, a former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW and a founding member of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, said that as a result of climate change, firefighters were battling fires that did not behave the way that textbooks said they should.<\/p>\n

Hotter weather is drying soil and plants faster than it once did, and as a result, areas that should not be prone to fire were beginning to burn, while some fire-prone areas were proving to be dangerously combustible soon after rains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that gives me the horrors is what an El Nino fire season will look like after this,\u201d said Mullins.<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Meteorology declared an El Nino event was under way in June, and since then, the water temperatures in the Pacific \u2013 one of the key indicators of the phenomenon \u2013 have risen faster than any other occasion in history. El Nino tends to drive temperatures higher on the east coast of Australia, making fire seasons longer and more dangerous.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Young<\/a><\/p>\n

The Country Fire Authority\u2019s chief officer Jason Heffernan said a positive Indian Ocean Dipole may also develop through winter and spring, but there is uncertainty around its timing and strength.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen El Nino and a positive IOD occur together, it has historically been linked to some of Victoria\u2019s driest years and most significant fire seasons such as during 1982-83, 2006-07 and 2019-20.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf warmer and drier conditions continue, forests and grasslands may dry out earlier than usual, increasing the chance of an earlier start to the fire-danger season in Victoria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the NSW fire-danger season does not officially begin across the state until October 1, four local government areas \u2013 Glen Innes, Inverell, Tenterfield LGA and Clarence Valley \u2013 are scheduled to bring their fire seasons forward to August 1 due to the increased threat.<\/p>\n

Rickard said the threat to communities on the east coast was not just of a longer fire season, and not only of more intense fires, but of a reduction in our capacity to respond to them, particularly in communities that have been battered by recent climate-related fire and flood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe flip and flop between extreme dry, extreme wet. And it\u2019s not like they neutralise each other \u2013 it\u2019s a compounding effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese communities are already exhausted. Climate change is not just a collection of disasters, it really is this whole combination and systems effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unrelenting, and that\u2019s why we need to address it at its cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get to the heart of what\u2019s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"NickNick O’Malley<\/a> is National Environment and Climate Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is also a senior writer and a former US correspondent.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-829710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}