“It's quite a sobering scenario”: Gippsland bushfire season could come early this year

South Gippsland Mayor John Schelling spends a lot of his time travelling around the region speaking with farmers and locals. One thing he’s noticed in the lead up to summer is an increase in bush growth – and a drier climate.

“This season has been drier than normal,” Schelling told the Monitor. “We've come off three or four very good seasons but we're having a bit of a dry season this year.”

In August, Fire Rescue Victoria said record low rainfall had been recorded in the state’s west over the last 18 months, “extending across west central and in south-west Gippsland”.

Due to this increased dryness, Victorian fire emergency services are expecting bushfire season to start earlier this year and believe south-west Gippsland is at increased risk.

Climate whiplash creates prime environment 

Director of the transdisciplinary Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania, Professor David Bowman has been researching fires in Australia for over 40 years.

Bowman told the Monitor that rising global temperatures “have a lot of knock-on effects, but one of the biggest is fuel dryness – and drier fuels means more extreme fire behaviour”.

“It's all connected to the capacity of a warmer atmosphere to absorb moisture and dry dead fuels out,” he said. 

“You're basically getting more energy in the landscape for longer because of these high temperatures.”

A report on the state of the climate published by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and the CSIRO states Australia’s climate has warmed by an average of 1.51°C since national records began in 1910.

“The bounce back or climate whiplash is where you go from very dry to very wet,” says Bowman. “It means many areas which were burnt in 2019-20 are primed to burn again. The shrub growth in the last few years is just nuts because there's been wetter conditions.”

“We've got landscapes that are recovered and are ready to burn again, even though they were burnt only five or six years ago. It's quite a sobering scenario.”

It’s because of this whiplash effect that Bowman says “we're seeing more intense, more extreme bushfire behaviour”.

Will seasons get drier?

Last week the federal government released its National Climate Risk Assessment report which revealed potential hazards of an increasingly hot Australian climate.

Accompanying the report was a tool from the Australian Climate Service, allowing users to compare heatwave temperatures and number of heatwave days as Australian temperatures climb to 2°C and 3°C above 1910 levels.

The BOM and CSIRO state of the climate report found rising temperatures would continue to “increase in the number of dangerous fire weather days and a longer fire season for much of southern and eastern Australia”.

Preparation

Mayor Schelling said he’s noticed increases in growth throughout Gippsland since the fires in 2021. 

“I can see where they previously slashed underneath the power lines. There are giant four foot gum trees there again. We need to see an increase in the slashing and back burning to create safe zones for the public.”

Bowman said he’d like to see more money spent on research and development to find more effective ways to manage landscapes full of dry fuel loads rather than continuing with prescribed burning.

“You can't run on luck, we'll run out,” he said.