Southern and eastern Australia need to prepare for heatwaves and increased fire risk this summer, as forecasts predict hot, dry weather.
Firefighters battle bushfires in Angourie, northern New South Wales, on September 10 this year, marking another early start to the season.
Jason O'Brien/AAP
Bureau of Meteorology researchers painstakingly analysed more than 40 years of data to work out exactly what is causing Australia’s spring bushfire phenomenon.
Fires are burning across Queensland and New South Wales.
AAP Image/Dan Peled
Australia’s environment took a beating in 2018, as temperatures rose, rainfall declined, the health of rivers and ecosystems worsened, and floods, droughts and bushfires all took their toll.
Fire has burned through a swathe of the Tjoritja National Park.
Tasmania wasn’t the only part of Australia that burned in January. The remote interior near Alice Springs saw a huge blaze, worsened by invasive buffel grass.
Without significant tree cover, dry and dusty landscapes can result.
Don Driscoll
A new petition is urging state and federal governments to rein in Australia’s rampant land clearing, which worsens the risk of bushfires and threatens to undo the work of the Emissions Reduction Fund.
Without a solid national plan to confront climate threats, there’s plenty more hardship on the horizon.
AAP Image/Rob Blakers
With heatwaves, droughts and fires all on the rise, the federal government is urged to merge its separate strategies on disaster resilience and climate readiness.
Victorian Governor Linda Dessau places a flower on a model of Victoria at a memorial service for the ten-year anniversary of the 2009 Victorian bushfires.
David Crosling/AAP
Black Saturday in 2009 was Australia’s worst bushfire tragedy. But climate projections predict more bushfire danger in the future, threatening our water supplies as well as homes.
We need to know we can handle whatever the climate throws at us.
AAP Image/Catherine Best
In the years after Black Saturday, climate adaptation research was in full swing, creating knowledge in how to deal with the risks. But a series of funding cuts have left this research in decline.
A burnt out property near Miena, Tasmania. The central Tasmanian house was fitted with roof sprinklers and surrounded by cleared land but succumbed to flying embers from bushfires.
AAP Image/Tasmania Fire Service
Victoria’s Country Fire Authority was founded in the aftermath of a previous bushfire tragedy – the 1939 Black Friday blazes. But its creation was a bigger political saga than many people realise.
Smoke billows from a massive bushfire in southern Tasmania.
Rob Blakers/AAP
Australia is facing an increase in extreme heat, fire danger weather, floods and marine heatwaves, according to the latest biennial snapshot from the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.
Hazardous air quality is when fine dust levels are significantly elevated relative to Australian air quality standards.
PAUL BRAVEN/AAP Image
The California fires are just the most recent in a series of major wildfires. Together, they suggest we need to look at alternative ways of living with fire.