Australia’s bush fires: caused by global warming?

Climate change scientists have warned that global warming increases the likelihood of extreme events such as Australia’s bush fires.

Although scientists are generally unwilling to link specific extreme weather events to climate change - because there will always be some occurrences due to natural variability in weather patterns - they have warned that climate change tilts weather patterns in favour of extreme events.

Experts at Oxford University and the UK Met Office found that human-caused climate change made Europe’s extreme heat wave of summer 2003 twice as likely as it would otherwise have been.

Now a scientist at the Australia National University has warned that climate change will mean hotter, drier summers in areas like Victoria.

Commenting on the bush fires, Professor Will Steffen said: “Events like this, severe heat waves and severe fires, become more likely with an underlying change in climate.

“People better prepare for the fact that the risk is increasing […of] more frequent extreme events that are related to temperature, like heat waves, like bush fires.”

Prof Steffen admitted that it is difficult to blame single weather events on greenhouse gas emissions.

However, he noted that Australia is heating up because of climate change.

“Our climate is getting warmer, as it is in the rest of the world, and I think there’s no doubt about that,” Prof Steffen said.

Professor Mark Adams, from the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, agrees.

“The weather and climatic conditions recently don’t augur well for the future. Bushfires are an important and going to be ever-present part of the landscape,” Prof Adams said.