El Nino - Will it make our bushfires worse? [AU]Friday 26 Jun 2026
Beyond the headlines, there is more to understand about the variety of natural climate phenomena that combine to contribute to major natural events. What is El Niño? Dr Nandini Ramesh, Senior Research Scientist: El Niño is a natural pattern of warming in the equatorial Pacific that occurs every few years. The warmer-than-normal waters of an El Niño event affect atmospheric patterns, altering weather all around the globe: its effects can lead to heatwaves, bushfires, and drought in Australia, Asia and Europe; torrential rains and flooding in East Africa, and tropical cyclones and storms over western North and South America. Will it make our bushfires worse? CSIRO Principal Research Scientist Dr Andrew Sullivan: While El Niño can influence Australia’s climate and weather, bushfire risk is driven by a combination of factors in addition to weather, including available vegetation, terrain and, importantly, ignition sources. Large-scale climate drivers like El Niño can influence broad conditions such as temperature and rainfall, but they do not determine whether fires start or how they behave on the ground. Bushfires remain a complex, localised hazard that depend on whether the right conditions and an ignition coincide. For this reason, the relationship between El Niño and bushfire activity is not straightforward. The occurrence of an El Niño event does not translate directly into bushfire occurrence or impacts, and some of Australia’s more severe fire seasons have occurred in non-El Niño years. Fire risk is shaped not by a single driver but by the cumulative interaction of climate influences over time, such as rainfall patterns, drought, and fire weather (the coincidence of hot, dry, windy weather), alongside local vegetation conditions and prevalence of potential ignition sources (both natural and human-caused). While the emergence of El Niño is an important component in some parts of the continent, it is not a definitive indicator of how a bushfire season will unfold. What matters is how these interacting factors evolve: wetter periods can boost vegetation growth, which may increase fire risk later if conditions dry out and are followed by hot, dry and windy weather with an ignition source. CSIRO is supporting national capabilities such as the National Bushfire Intelligence Capability, improved fire danger rating systems and advanced tools like Spark that model fire spread and behaviour. Together, these advances help emergency services and communities better understand and respond to bushfire risk under a range of climate scenarios, including, but not limited to, El Niño. More >> Source & image credit: CSIRO | ||
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