El Nino threatens to cause bad and big bushfire year in 2023

A bushfire expert has predicted that Australia is in for a horror bushfire season this year as the weather dries up.

Australians have been warned to expect a scorching fire season this year as hot, dry conditions return.

Despite an El Nino event not yet being declared, Australia’s weather is drying up after years of La Nina’s torrential rain, meaning that catastrophic bushfires are expected to take place this summer.

As the climate gets hotter, Australia continues to “get drier and drier” according to former Fire and Rescue NSW Commissioner and Councillor with the Climate Council Greg Mullins who argues that “we’re set for a bad year”.

“I’m not a betting man, but if I was a betting man, I’d say we’re going to get big fires this year,” he told the Climate Council’s El Nino media briefing.

Australia is in for a fiery summer according to the Climate Council.NCA NewsWire / Tony McDonough

Former FRNSW Commissioner Greg Mullins had a dire warning for Australians. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“Not like Black Summer but we will have days, perhaps a number of days in a row, periodically, where we lose homes.”

Mr Mullins warned that “three years of rain” from La Nina have created the perfect storm for fire conditions this summer.

“We get a lot of grass growth in areas that don’t normally have coverage of biofuel,” he said.

“The plants are a few centimetres apart, you can’t walk through it, it’s just so incredibly thick.

El Nino could cause a drought but it could cause forests to become tinder dry and perfect for a bushfire.

“This is what we call a transition fuel, the legumes they put nitrogen back into the soil to help get the forest back to what it was but they’ll be there for years to come and can create biofuels above normal.”

He also warned that areas around Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong that weren’t burnt during Black Summer could be in the firing line this time thanks to the fuel loads.

Not only are more fires expected, but the time that firefighters have to prepare has decreased.

“There‘s a major increase in the number of days of serious fire weather each year and there’s a corresponding decrease in opportunities to carry out hazard reduction burning,” he said.

“So the fuels that are increasing out there, we can’t actually deal with -- so we’ve been set up this year for a possibly very serious fire season.”

There are fears that multiple serious fires across the eastern states could see firefighters stretched thin. NCA NewsWire / Tony McDonough

Mr Mullins also warned that the frequency in fires across the states means that firefighters will be stretched thin.

“In the past, fire seasons were sequential and would move from Queensland down to NSW then Victoria, and we could share aircraft, fire trucks and people between borders,” he said.

“Now we get fire seasons that are simultaneous.”

Mr Mullins ended his talk by warning that the amount of money spent on preparing for the upcoming season is “paltry” compared to the problem.

He also argued that the government was “making this worse” by spending taxpayer dollars propping up the coal, oil, and gas industry in Australia.