Newcastle could face more weather extremes and a growing number of days above 35 degrees as the region faces a high chance of a hotter-than-average season ahead.
The CSIRO's new biennial State of the Climate report paints a bleak picture of climate change as firefighters brace for a potentially dangerous summer.
The average temperature in Newcastle for each month of 2024 so far has been equal to or hotter than the long-term average, which the Bureau of Meteorology predicts will continue with an 80 per cent chance of above-average summer temperatures.
The State of the Climate report said while the years since the Black Summer of 2019-20 had been affected by La Nina conditions, the south-east of Australia had faced a decrease in April to October rainfall of about nine per cent since 1994.
CSIRO climate research manager Jaci Brown said researchers were concerned about a surge of weather extremes.
"It's not unusual for Newcastle to have four [annual] days over 35 degrees but what we're worried about is the number of those increasing," Dr Brown said.
She pointed to a climate outlook website for farmers called My Climate View, which predicts average annual days above 35 degrees in Newcastle will rise from four to seven by the 2050s.
And while dryness is forecasted to worsen, Dr Brown said when rain falls it is expected to be more intense.
The Lower Hunter experienced that fury last Thursday, when wild winds brought down trees and pelted some areas with large hail stones.
"The heavy rain events are getting heavier," Dr Brown said.
"The warmer the globe, the more moisture gets held in the atmosphere and when we get a heavy rain, it really buckets down, so we have to be prepared for both the drought and the flooding."
Dr Brown said extreme storms coupled with sea level rises were also likely to worsen erosion in coastal areas.
The CSIRO report found there had been an increase in extreme fire weather, and in the length of the fire seasons, across large parts of Australia since the 1950s. This has led to larger and more frequent fires, especially in the southern half of the country.
The Newcastle Herald reported in September that Hunter firefighting crews were tracking well with planned hazard reduction burns.
But further afield, Rural Fire Service spokesperson Greg Allan said wet weather had prevented planned burns from going ahead and placed the service behind its targets for this stage of the season.
Mr Allan said the rainfall had also increased the risk of grass fires.
"Which will largely affect west of the dividing range but that's not to say bushland along the coast is not at risk," he said.
"There is a lot of area that wasn't burned along the coast in the 2019-20 season.
"All we need is a couple of hot windy days to increase that danger."
It comes as the EU climate monitor Copernicus says 2024 is "virtually certain" to be the world's hottest year on record.
The 2024 State of the Climate report was the CSIRO's eighth iteration and Dr Brown said the trends had been the same in all reports.
"The report is saying climate change is happening, and what we're recording every two years is as we expect: the conditions are getting warmer, dry places are getting drier, rainfall is getting heavier," she said.
"I think the message now is be climate smart. Climate change is not a secret and the report is projecting what's going to happen.
"What we need to be thinking about is what we put in place to make ourselves climate resilient."
