Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme fire weather in Australia and other parts of the world. The scientific consensus is that the unprecedented scale of the devastating Australia ‘Black Summer’ bushfires in late 2019 and early 2020 were a result of the influence of climate change. These fires were a major threat to human health, both directly through the fires and through hazardous bushfire smoke, which exposed large population centres to dangerous levels of air pollution. Other parts of the world including Europe, Southeast Asia, the Amazon, and most recently California, have also been affected by devastating wildfires exacerbated by climate change. The influence of climate change means such events are likely to increase in scale and frequency in the future.
