How extreme weather in Europe and North America is signalling a new era of fire danger for Australia

Fires raging across Europe and North America and the rapidly developing El Nino in the Pacific have Australian bushfire authorities looking to the coming fire season in this country – and the one after that – with increasing dread.

Western Europe is facing its fourth heatwave since May, with June being its hottest month in recorded history. The first half of 2026 was the third-hottest in the region’s history, following the same periods in 2025 and 2024, with global warming caused by the global failure to arrest carbon emissions accelerating.

As a result, uncontainable fires have seen more than 320,000 people evacuated across Spain and France, while in the UK, firefighters are battling blazes from southern England to northern Scotland, and millions of hectares are ablaze in the United States and Canada.

Firefighters in Europe are now being confronted with the sort of catastrophic conditions that have become more common over recent years in Australia, with fires becoming large enough to generate pyrocumulonimbus storms, weather systems created by fire that can throw out lightening ahead of fire fronts, said NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner Trent Curtin.

“Our hearts go out to those communities and firefighters, particularly where lives are at risk,” said Curtin. “In parts of Europe, we’re seeing 250,000 hectares that have been burnt since the start of the year. The scale and the enormity of the fires is really, really challenging.”

La Trobe University climate adaptation specialist Professor Lauren Rickards said the blazes in the northern hemisphere were further evidence that we are collectively heading deeper into an era marked by an increasing number of ferocious fires.

“When you see something happening, whether it’s Europe or California, you understand that it’s not a coincidence, it’s actually an indication that our shared common system is shifting, it’s tilting towards a more fiery existence,” Rickards said.

NSW RFS firefighting crews are already on the ground in the United States and more are heading to Canada on Thursday, Curtin said.

“If we received a request from Europe, then we’d be willing and able to support with our expertise to support them in their time of need.”

The lengthening fire seasons across the world are making it harder for firefighting agencies to share resources around the world, Curtin said, particularly as demand for firefighting aircraft and trained crews is increasing. But he said NSW was served by its own air fleet and did not depend on aircraft from North America.

Greg Mullins, a former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW and a founding member of Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, said that as a result of climate change, firefighters were battling fires that did not behave the way that textbooks said they should.

Hotter weather is drying soil and plants faster than it once did, and as a result, areas that should not be prone to fire were beginning to burn, while some fire-prone areas were proving to be dangerously combustible soon after rains.

“The thing that gives me the horrors is what an El Nino fire season will look like after this,” said Mullins.

The Bureau of Meteorology declared an El Nino event was under way in June, and since then, the water temperatures in the Pacific – one of the key indicators of the phenomenon – have risen faster than any other occasion in history. El Nino tends to drive temperatures higher on the east coast of Australia, making fire seasons longer and more dangerous.

The Country Fire Authority’s chief officer Jason Heffernan said a positive Indian Ocean Dipole may also develop through winter and spring, but there is uncertainty around its timing and strength.

“When El Nino and a positive IOD occur together, it has historically been linked to some of Victoria’s driest years and most significant fire seasons such as during 1982-83, 2006-07 and 2019-20.

“If warmer and drier conditions continue, forests and grasslands may dry out earlier than usual, increasing the chance of an earlier start to the fire-danger season in Victoria.”

Though the NSW fire-danger season does not officially begin across the state until October 1, four local government areas – Glen Innes, Inverell, Tenterfield LGA and Clarence Valley – are scheduled to bring their fire seasons forward to August 1 due to the increased threat.

Rickard said the threat to communities on the east coast was not just of a longer fire season, and not only of more intense fires, but of a reduction in our capacity to respond to them, particularly in communities that have been battered by recent climate-related fire and flood.

“We flip and flop between extreme dry, extreme wet. And it’s not like they neutralise each other – it’s a compounding effect.

“These communities are already exhausted. Climate change is not just a collection of disasters, it really is this whole combination and systems effect.

“It’s unrelenting, and that’s why we need to address it at its cause.”

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