“Nothing we can do”: Why Melbourne's east is heading into a longer, drier fire season

Parts of eastern Melbourne are set to face unusually low rainfall until June, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s latest seasonal outlook.

It will mean Melbourne’s east stays drier for longer than usual during autumn, increasing the risk of fire in greener areas and the chances of a longer fire season.

As conditions get hotter and vegetation gets drier, how are authorities preparing for worsening fire conditions?

❓ What’s happening? Parts of southeastern, eastern and northern Australia are facing an increased chance of unusually low rainfall from March to May. If estimates are correct, these regions would be within the driest 20 percent of Bureau records between 1981 and 2018.

• Accompanying the drier conditions in Victoria, maximum temperatures for autumn are likely to be above the 1960-1991 average of 20.3 degrees Celsius.

🌦️ Weather impacts: Griffith University Climate Action Beacon director, Professor Brendan Mackey, said most of southern Australia had seen a long-term decline in autumn and winter rainfall since the 1970s, which was largely driven by human influence on the climate from greenhouse gases.

• 🗣️ “Due to global warming, low-pressure systems are getting kind of pushed further south, so they are increasingly not dropping their rain over southern Australia,” Mackey told the Eastern Melburnian.

😵‍💫 Less predictable: Mackey said this was making climate disasters more frequent and erratic.

• 🗣️ “What global warming is doing is amplifying them – it's making them last longer and it's making them more severe,” said Mackey.

🍁 Seasons changing: Country Fire Authority (CFA) research and development manager, Dr Sarah Harris, said Victoria’s fire seasons were getting longer due to changing weather conditions and climate change – now starting one to three months earlier and ending two to six weeks later than usual.

• 🗣️ “For most of the state, we will see a doubling of those very high fire danger days and in some parts further east, we'll even see a tripling [by 2100],” Harris told the Eastern Melburnian.

🧑‍🚒 On the front lines: Belgrave Heights and South CFA brigade captain Sean Grondman said growing complacency in a growing population was another factor increasing the risk of fire damage.

• 🗣️ “We're still in a very high drought factor in the sub-surface soil, so it's going to take a lot of moisture to bring that back to a safe level for us,” Grondman told the Eastern Melburnian. “There's nothing we can do. All that we can do is continue with our planned burn program.”

⏭️ What’s next? Harris said as CFA not only responds to fires, but other natural disasters such as floods and storms, the whiplash effect of unpredictable climate and weather meant CFA needed to be more adaptable to these rapid changes.

• 🗣️ “We’ve got to be agile and optimise where we can because we're dealing with this changing environment,” said Harris.