Bushfires and global warming: is there a link?

Guardian (UK): Scientists are reluctant to link ­individual weather events to global warming, because natural variability will always throw up extreme events. However, they say that climate change loads the dice, and can make severe episodes more likely.

…Bob Brown, a senator who leads the Australian Greens, said the bushfires showed what climate change could mean for Australia. "Global warming is predicted to make this sort of event happen 25%, 50% more," he told Sky News. "It's a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change."

…More than 60% of Queensland has been declared a disaster zone in the worst floods for more than 30 years. Some 3,000 homes have been affected, and the main highway between Cairns and Townsville has been cut off. Roger Stone, a climate expert at the University of Southern Queensland, said: "It certainly fits the climate change models, but I have to add the proviso that it's very difficult, even with extreme conditions like this, to always attribute it to climate change."

…Australia is in the grip of the worst drought in a century, which has stretched for more than seven years in some areas and has forced restrictions on water use in the country's big cities.

A government-commissioned report on climate change last year warned that exceptionally hot years, which used to occur once every 22 years, would occur every one or two years, virtually making drought a permanent part of the Australian environment.

A 2002 astronaut photo of fire scars in the Simpson Desert, Australia. NASA