Three consecutive wet years have primed the Australian landscape for dangerous grass fires, with the potential for burning on a scale "never before experienced", warns a new report.
Significant grass fires have already broken out in almost every state and territory over the past month, but the worst is yet to come, according to firefighter and former commissioner of Fire and Rescue New South Wales Greg Mullins.
Mr Mullins prepared today's report alongside scientists Joëlle Gergis, David Karoly and Martin Rice for the Climate Council.
According to Mr Mullins, satellite images and ground reports show large parts of the country have built up huge fuel loads during the prime growing conditions produced by the triple La Niña.
Those fuel loads are now drying out and dying as La Niña continues to weaken, with swathes of hot, dry weather gripping much of the country, creating a potential "powder keg".
"It's west of the divide and it's right through Central Australia, the Simpson Desert, Alice Springs, Larapinta, parts of South Australia, Queensland, Victoria — it's national," Mr Mullins said.
"Some of these [areas] have got grass 1.5 metres to 2m high as far as you can see."
Fuel load is measured in tonnes per hectare. In semi-arid Australia, fuel loads are often around half a tonne to 1.5t per hectare, but even in these areas fuel loads have ballooned in the wet, Mr Mullins said.
"At the moment some of those areas are at 4.5t to 6t per hectare."
Conditions are expected to worsen over the coming months as La Niña weakens, according to Professor Karoly.
"It's not just arid areas, it is in fact much of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia as well as south-east Queensland.
"The risk is also expected to continue and build in March. It's a relatively warm period in southern Australia and there's often not much rain."
According to the Climate Council's research, Australia's worst grass fires have followed previous consecutive La Niñas, with the worst on record coming after 1974-75, scorching around 117 million hectares of the country.
"If it doesn't happen this time, it will be the first time it hasn't," Mr Mullins said.
Following periods of high rainfall, grass fires usually present the first threat as grasslands are quick to dry out. And though they may sound more benign than bushfires, Mr Mullins said they can be just as dangerous.
"Scientists and firefighters will say they're less intense than forest fires, but for a person caught up in one that means nothing.
"They move up to four times quicker than a forest fire and they will kill."
Indigenous management key long term strategy
Josh Gilbert is a Worimi man from Gloucester in New South Wales working as a consultant in the Indigenous agriculture and land management spaces. He's also studying a PhD in indigenous agriculture.
His parents' farm 40 minutes from Gloucester has been hit by one of the worst droughts on record, which was followed by bushfires, then floods.
"On the back of the drought, we had two floods that smashed most of our fences, and are equally the biggest floods we've seen in recent time," he said.
" [And] we had the bushfires before the floods."
He said he's seen potential fire conditions worsen recently as the country around Gloucester has dried out, and that one fire has already got out of control this year.
"The big amount of rain led to a real increase in grass growth and the conditions have dried really quickly," Mr Gilbert said.
"Just in our local area in Gloucester we had a fire get out of hand. It was pretty severe — we had helicopters [water] bombing it."
Mr Gilbert said his family has strategies to help with fire resilience on the farm, but Indigenous land management is the best long-term option.
Across much of Australia, he said, there's already a wealth of Indigenous knowledge and experience in land management that can be supported. Where that knowledge has been lost, it can be relearned.
"There's an opportunity right across Australia to have that practical land management tool for mob. What I encourage is that land is proactively managed, even for conservation.
"Mob who have a longstanding knowledge and relationship with country — that care on country is what's going to benefit it most, rather than putting a padlock on a gate and hoping for the best."
Climate change 'supercharging' risk
Today's report forecasts dangerous grass fire conditions over the next few months, and that by next summer there will be an elevated risk of bushfires as well.
But while La Niña-El Niño transitions can create the conditions for fire, climate change extremes are "supercharging" the risk, Mr Mullins and Professor Karoly said.
A combination of El Niño and temperature extremes next summer has the potential to produce another devastating bushfire season.
But Professor Karoly said while an El Niño is a possibility, it's not considered likely at this early stage.
"The Bureau's [BOM] forecast models suggest that an El Niño is possible, but not likely yet.
"But even with normal conditions come spring and summer in southern Australia later this year, it's likely there'll be rapid drying conditions which will affect grasslands first, then forest fire danger will increase."
Mr Mullins said it's a matter of when, not if, the fires will come.
"Our message is: this is coming, get ready. But if we have a climate change overlay, this could be massive.
"That's the worry. All the fire services are starting to warn already, but we just don't know what to expert in terms of weather — if it's supercharged, we might see something like Colorado."
In the US winter of December 2021, following a drought in Colorado, a grass fire driven by winds in excess of 185 kilometres per hour ripped through country near Denver, destroying 1,100 homes and killing one person.
As an example of the unpredictable weather Denver was facing, it snowed the next day.
As well as supercharging weather events, Professor Karoly said climate change is narrowing the window for hazard reduction burning.
Mood has changed but more needs to be done
Mr Mullins said he was fighting fires ahead of the Black Summer bushfires in 2019, but couldn't get the federal government at the time to listen to the warnings.
"I was out there as a volunteer firefighter and you had minsters in Canberra saying, 'You don't know what you're talking about.'"
He said the attitude appears to be very different this time across all levels of government.
"It's chalk and cheese. They're putting money ahead of disasters. It's nice to be listened to for a change.
"I'm pretty confident that if we do face a catastrophe, the states, territories, federal and local government will all work much better together."
Mr Mullins said residents need to speak to their local fire services, and take advice on how to prepare for fires. They also need to understand the warning system and know when it's time to leave.
But he said the bigger picture is we need to do more to slow climate change.
"This reinforces the need for more climate action. It's good to see us move in that direction, but we need to push the accelerator worldwide and stop the planet heating up so quickly."
