Likelihood of unprecedented drought and fire weather during Australia’s 2019 megafires

Abstract

Abstract Between June 2019 and March 2020, thousands of wildfires spread devastation across Australia at the tragic cost of many lives, vast areas of burnt forest, and estimated economic losses upward of AU$100 billion. Exceptionally hot and dry weather conditions, and preceding years of severe drought across Australia, contributed to the severity of the wildfires. Here we present analysis of a very large ensemble of initialized climate simulations to assess the likelihood of the concurrent drought and fire-weather conditions experienced at that time. We focus on a large region in southeast Australia where these fires were most widespread and define two indices to quantify the susceptibility to fire from drought and fire weather. Both indices were unprecedented in the observed record in 2019. We find that the likelihood of experiencing such extreme susceptibility to fire in the current climate was 0.5%, equivalent to a 200 year return period. The conditional probability is many times higher than this when we account for the states of key climate modes that impact Australian weather and climate. Drought and fire-weather conditions more extreme than those experienced in 2019 are also possible in the current climate.