Increased extreme fire weather occurrence in southeast Australia and related atmospheric drivers

There is evidence suggesting that fire activity in southeast Australia has increased in the past two decades. There is also anecdotal evidence that pyrocumulonimbus events have become more common, although the observed record is short. We explore the extent to which possible changes in fire and pyrocumulonimbus occurrence in southeast Australia can be explained by changes in the number of extreme (above the 95th percentile) days per year of two fire-weather indices, the Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) and the continuous Haines index (C-Haines). For the period 1958 through 2020, we show that there is a dependence between the number of extreme FFDI days per year and burned area for forested parts of southeast Australia. To a lesser extent, there is a relationship between the FFDI and pyrocumulonimbus occurrences. We find an increase in the occurrence of extreme FFDI days from the late 1990s, with up to 24 more extreme days per year. In the southwest of the state of Victoria, there are concomitant increases in temperature and wind speed, and decreases in relative humidity. We show that the structure of C-Haines has not changed, but extreme days more frequently coincide with extreme FFDI days. This suggests that possible observed increases in pyrocumulonimbus occurrences may partly be explained as a consequence of the increases in co-occurring extreme FFDI and C-Haines days, rather than due to changes in the atmospheric stability. We also find that changes in the atmospheric circulation are consistent with those seen in the fire weather indices. Increased surface and mid-tropospheric pressure since 1998 are consistent with a poleward shift of the storm track. In particular, an increase in anticyclonic anomalies in the Tasman Sea is indicative of enhanced blocking activity. Although blocking frequency in these longitudes has decreased overall, the proportion of extreme FFDI days that are considered blocked has increased.