After three years of placid, wet summers, the needle has shifted.
While the final set of local metrics are still to fully confirm it, all the indicators suggest this coming summer will be fiercely, unrelentingly hot.
And to compound that concern, the ACT's Emergency Services Agency has been racked by internal culture wars, where blame and fear prevailed, eroding public confidence in our fire protectors. A snap review of the ESA was so damning that Commissioner Georgeina Whelan had no option but to resign.
Meanwhile, the feared El Nino effect, fed by warm conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, appears ready to make its return once more. But this is just one influential factor linked to many.
The Bureau of Meteorology has reported that sea surface temperatures have exceeded the required thresholds and an alert is now in place. Extreme heatwave conditions across the northern hemisphere from the start of July resulted in the world's hottest week on record.
Sea ice researchers with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership have reported that for the second consecutive year, the area of sea ice around the world's coldest continent was the lowest since satellite measurements began, with more sectors of the coastline ice-free than at any time in recorded history.
In June, global average sea surface temperatures reached unprecedented levels.
After three extreme events in the deep south over the past six years, scientists have described it as a "regime shift".
Parts of Europe are experiencing that shift right now.
Anomalies in high sea surface temperature have emerged in the North Atlantic, "heat domes" have sat across southern Europe for weeks and wildfires have spread across parts of southern Greece and Italy. On the trendy islands of Corfu and Rhodes, tourists were evacuated.
Intense hot spots have appeared all around the globe. China just experienced its highest temperature in recorded history, topping out at 52.2 degrees, beating its previous high by 1.7 degrees. Spain has lost 66,300 hectares to 324 fires this northern summer.
Canada has lost far more forest to bushfires this season than Australia did in 2019-20.
In Phoenix, Arizona, a city of 1.65 million people, a new US heat record was created this month when temperatures topped 43.3 degrees for 19 consecutive days.
Meanwhile, smoke generated from massive bushfires in British Columbia was picked up by the jet stream and crossed the Atlantic, descending on the UK and Norway.
What's coming this summer?
Despite decades of climate study by Professor Janette Lindesay, from the ANU's Fenner School of Environment and Society, the complexities of atmospheric pressures, ocean temperatures, and a myriad of other influencing factors make an accurate prediction for the coming summer difficult.
The climatologist is watching closely what happens over the Pacific Ocean in the weeks ahead - particularly the winds, air pressures and sea surface temperatures near the South American coast because they will be critical factors. Mid to late September, at the latest, will provide the most likely window on the summer to come.
She said while an El Nino event pre-disposes for lower rainfall, it only accounts for between 16-20 per cent of rainfall variation in the ACT. It is not, in itself, the single determinant of what is possibly headed this way.
The rest is due to other scientific factors with impressive-sounding names like the Indian Ocean Dipole, the Southern Annular Mode and the Southern Oscillation Index, all of which interact in "really complex ways".
However, one thing is certain: as rain-producing weather systems shift offshore in late 2023-24 as appears very likely, the wet, relatively mild summers of the past three years won't continue.
"We need to prepare for a hot dry summer," she said.
But every El Nino event, she said, was "slightly different from every other one". They are notoriously unpredictable.
"They are a bit like human fingerprints, they have common characteristics but are different. They start at slightly different times, some will peak in November, some will peak in January - they follow different cycles of development.
"That behaviour is tied in with the impacts they have [on our weather].
"We had a particularly strong El Nino event, for instance, in 1997-98 but this hasn't stuck in anyone's minds for excessive drought or heat or anything else because it was actually a normal rainfall year.
"And the big drought was linked with the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfire event; that was not an El Nino event. Yes, we had very high temperatures, we had the drought but it wasn't an El Nino year."
Have lessons really been learned?
Complacency is our worst enemy, says bushfire expert Tony Bartlett.
The highly experienced bushfire incident controller, forester, and former member of the ACT Bushfire Council says that three mild summers, a build-up of vegetation and still no action at Canberra's most likely "frontline" of another wildfire attack - the remnant stringybark open forest of Blackie's Hill, fronting on heavily populated Denman Prospect - should be a major cause for concern.
Like those of us who have been watching the international news and the dramatic fire events unfolding during the northern summer, he's concerned that the window of opportunity the mild weather of the past few years provided now has been lost.
As the climate needle now swings back to delivering us with fierce summers, the faster the drying rate accelerates in the grasses, the open woodlands and in the mountain forests.
The recent Canadian conflagrations, in which native pine forests erupted like thousands of Roman candles, have preyed on Tony Bartlett's mind.
"Canada is not considered as fire-prone a country as south-eastern Australia and they are now up over 12 million hectares burnt," he said.
"We can't draw direct comparisons but it's exceedingly worrying that if we don't read the signals, we've got our head in the sand."
"It's coming here, we know that; whether it hits its peak this summer is hard to say. But it is coming."
Soil moisture profiles in the mountain forests should provide a measure of protection for the summer ahead in our area.
However, he says fire management works on the ACT public land was "way down".
"They [the ACT government] haven't hit their targets for prescribed burning or track maintenance; the access tracks in reserves around Canberra and up in the Brindabellas are in atrocious condition.
"That means that if there are fires, we can't get to them fast enough. Getting to these ignition points within the first 24 to 26 hours is absolutely critical to prevent fire spread."
As the waist-high swathes of grassland around the national capital dry out, the chances of a fast-running, wind-fed urban grassfire will escalate.
"We shouldn't forget that on Christmas Eve 2001, in 90 minutes a fire which started near Coppins Crossing jumped the Tuggeranong Parkway and ran all the way almost into Deakin," he said.
What needs to be done
As one of 40 emergency leaders for climate action, former ACT ESA commissioner and Army Major General Peter Dunn has been vocal in the need for greater preparation for what lies ahead of us - and the work which still needs to be done.
In 2019-20, he was back on the firefighting frontline with his neighbours at Lake Conjola, on the NSW South Coast, as the firefront swept toward them. Three people died and 89 homes were destroyed by three fires which converged on the South Coast on New Year's Eve. The memory of that night, and the toll it took on that small, close-knit community, remained vivid.
"You only need to switch on the news at night and see what's happening in Greece and other parts of southern Europe; we are witnessing catastrophic changes to the global climate," he said.
"But to sheet it home to south-east Australia, what is hugely relevant to the coming summer is that we are now emerging from a lengthy La Nina event.
"There have been three 'protracted' La Nina episodes since 1950: 1954-57, 1973-76, and 1998-2001.
During each of these periods there was prolific growth of vegetation, followed by extensive grass fires, then by major east coast forest fires causing loss of life and property, particularly in New South Wales."
He said that one of his major concerns was that the Defence Strategic Review, released this year, foreshadowed how the armed services were easing out of civilian support roles.
"Of course, they [the defence forces] will help out when pushed," he said.
"What needs to happen to compensate is a dramatic increase in resourcing for our SES, our RFS and our Fire and Rescue.
"We don't need a new organisation, we just need to properly equip and resource those we already have."
