Changing Patterns

This section discusses the effects of climate change on fire regime patterns.

Australia’s fire regime

The fire regimes of an area can be understood as the time of the year, frequency, intensity, and patchiness of the fire an area experiences.

Understanding how much climate change affects our landscapes and surrounding environment, it is essential to recognize its effect on wildfires and wildfire patterns. The exacerbation of wildfires caused by climate change results from the changes to the drivers of fire regimes, which are changes in fuel amount, fuel dryness, fire weather, and ignition.

Australia is great for studying wildfires as it is the most fire-prone continent. Due to long-term climate trends and variability, the continent experienced its hottest and driest year in 2019. These compounded effects have been proven to encourage the chances of large forest fires occurring on the continent. Coupled with the increased frequency of forest fires, paleoclimate evidence has shown fire danger indicators outside the range of historical experience. This evidence proves that not only are the risks of wildfires becoming greater, but the areas that are likely to be affected are also growing larger.