Jim Ricketts

Watch and act warning issued for fast-moving grass, scrub fire near Berringa More than 20 crews are battling the first major blaze of the season.

… and following on from the extraordinarily late season fires in the last month of autumn, we have had the extraordinarily early, first of the season, multi strike team response to bushfires at Beringa. This, in the first month of spring.
www.thecourier.com.au/story/907712...

And this, perhaps, ties some threads together.

www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/13...

Just to preempt two things.
1. Yes. Oscillating temperature signals superposed on a rising trend *could* look like a series of steps - with a totally different meaning. The first thing one considers.
2. Tipping points can manifest as steps, as can regime shifts. The energetics are vastly different.

So having had fires to deal with, Roger Jones led, and I helped a bit with the following paper - now accepted.
Regime Change in Top of the Atmosphere Radiation Fluxes: Implications for Understanding Earth’s Energy Imbalance
R. N. Jones and J. H. Ricketts
www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/13...

Continuing a theme of climate impacts on fire. Here in SE Australia, we are in severe drought, while much of the North floods. Last Sunday night/Monday morning we had a rare and very strong Southern Ocean Vortex and with winter a week away, widely scattered wild fires starting near midnight .

From a very early start to the fire season, how are things as they stand right now? (See attached)Tomorrow is a total fire ban (again). I will be assigned to Ground Observations (again), and whilst in theory I could be operating anywhere in the state, it's probable we will stay close to home.

Here's the situation at the end of NYD. Mild days, humidity not low, winds generally Southerly. But overall, a drought, with very little ground moisture, and the fire season started early.

For VPD to remain constant, Specific Humidity has to rise relatively faster than average temperatures, and in our environment it has to do so in the driest and hottest season.

As of now, for now, the fire is mostly staying within the control lines

The fire season is already a month in, and according to locals, as dry as anyone alive has records of. The real point for me, is that while we talk about the contribution that RH changes make to fire behaviour, it's a simple fact that vapour pressure deficits (VPD) drive vegetative drying.

I returned last Friday night from strike teams duties. Obligatory smoke shot

Looks benign enough doesn't it. But the point where we took obs, is now kilometres into the black, and the burnt area is about 10 times bigger.

Here's a view from that day

The terrible irony of being unable to contribute to a paper on climate change because one is on the ground mapping, and fighting, fires which are unquestionably climate change enhanced.
On Dec 20 our team GIntel6 did a sweep of the Eastern side of fires started by lightning in the Grampians.

Comparing Observed and Projected Changes in Australian Fire Climates The Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) is the main measure used in Australia for estimating fire risk. Recent work by the authors showed that the FFDI forms stable state regimes, nominated as fire climat...

And just maybe it's sensible to talk about fire-climates as well.
www.mdpi.com/2571-6255/7/...

Identifying and Attributing Regime Shifts in Australian Fire Climates This paper introduces and analyzes fire climate regimes, steady-state conditions that govern the behavior of fire weather. A simple model representing fire climate was constructed by regressing high-q...

Fire indices are not changing smoothly either
www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/11...

Regime Changes in Atmospheric Moisture under Climate Change Recent work attributing decadal regime changes in temperature to radiative forcing is extended to atmospheric moisture. Temperature, and specific and relative humidity (T, q, RH) from the HadISDH data...

But I also try to get time to contribute to science, and at my age I prefer to avoid me-too topics and papers, preferring to be data led.
Increasingly drying atmospheres MUSt affect fire. www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/13...

Evidence and Explanation for the 2023 Global Warming Anomaly In 2023, the rapid increase in global temperature of around 0.25 °C caught the scientific community by surprise. Its cause has been investigated largely by exploring variations on a long-term trend, w...

While I was having my week disrupted by fires my PhD supervisor and colleague Prof Roger Jones has but this out.
www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/15...

I'm a regular responder, and the tanker at the bottom left is from my Brigade. I'm now a Ground Observer collecting weather ahead of the fire as well as potential exposures. That's the house to the right of the tanker. In this case we had scoped the forward run and reassessed 15-30min later

A bit of an introduction. What's it like working in Climate Change and being a fire fighter in one of the real hot-spots?
Our South Eastern Australian fire season has kicked off early under a lash of a dry winter and spring. I fill several roles in the CFA, and this photo encapsulates two.

Watched. On a personal level. Here in SE Australia we have already had active fires and reported house losses. I do not know many involved in fire fighting who deny the drying but there are those who are sceptical of the causes but here I am. Late spring with hydrophobic soil and 1/4 in the dam.

Ah. Well there you are. Reminder to self, “There are more things on Heaven and Earth…”

For context. Over a number of years I worked for CSIRO in what was then Atmospheric Research; and enjoyed chatting to the people from the Ice-Labs amongst others. But I didn't pick up on the idea that bubbles in ice could capture different processes at different scales of applicability.

Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation - PubMed The covariation of carbon dioxide (CO(2)) concentration and temperature in Antarctic ice-core records suggests a close link between CO(2) and climate during the Pleistocene ice ages. The role and rela...

I should have posted the link.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22481...

Oddly enough the core assumptions of the dismissive are uniformly incorrect. That it promotes one side only of a positive feedback loop, is documented on RealClimate from at leat 2006. It's not my domain so I only recently came across this one however.