You mean the link doesn't mention it? Are you suggesting something else? Climate change (eg drought(s) caused by a number of factors) would seem a fairly obvious major factor to an outside observer, as mentioned in the article.
Yes. Absolutely. 100%.
None of those Scientists and Experts have really got a clue.
The real cause of the fires (apart from the combination of high temperatures, catastrophic wind conditions, and 87% of fires being deliberately, or accidently lit or caused by man) is the ruined hydrological cycle.
Yes we've had years long drought, but in the geological record there are droughts that stretched for a few decades ~ 30 years ! ..... and Indigenous People managed to survive that.
The hydrological cycle has been ruined right from the arrival of the British, European Stock, and Inappropriate farming methods. In as little as 10-15 years wetlands and chain of ponds systems were ruined. Creeks and rivers became eroded and incised, wetlands and floodplains were drained and dried. Some of this destruction took place deliberately under the guise of Government sponsored programs. Moist vegetation was cleared and the daily local evapo-transpiration cycle lost.
Further to this increasing destruction has been the corporate pillaging of the water resource, diversions, floodplain harvesting and basically exceeding the capacity of the land. There are several thousand bone dry kilometers of riverbed throughout the Murray Darling system - an area as big as France and Germany combined is a giant denuded dried oven. Add to this the cutting and loss of groundwater aquifers through Mining, Fracking, Coal Seam Gas Extraction, and Underground Coal Seam Combustion. This destruction has increased exponentially over the last several decades.
So what does all this mean?
It means that Australia was categorically the most magnificently efficient water conservation ecosystem ever invented.
Water didn't usually sit (apart from flood years) in open waterways and lakes. It sat in the ground. In the soil sponge, and in the vegetation - sheltered from massive rates of evaporation.
Even in droughts that soil sponge would drip water drop by drop - drip drip drip - keeping wetlands full, and creeks and rivers flowing.
What this meant was that plains and the valley floors exhibited positive groundwater pressure - keeping the soil and vegetation moist (and shaded before widespread clearing) - and importantly also keeping the groundwater table under the hills and mountains raised and accessible to the vegetation. The moisture cycle was intact and virtually 100% efficient. I have measured temperatures fully ~15°C below the ambient 40-odd under the shade of old growth eucalypts bordering fully functioning emphemeral wetlands. Such things provided natural barriers to natural (lightning ignited) fires from becoming runaway conflagrations.
This is all ruined. The water table dropped. The vegetation dried and in drought stress. The soil sponge dried and ruined. Soil carbon lost and blown away on the wind leaving a bare hard dry claypan devoid of biological activity and fertility. The temperatures of all environments has increased - even wet forests. Natural rates of composting and moist soil formation have all but ceased. Instead dried loose vegetative matter (shed bark, leaves etc) fuel loads just build and build.
This is the real cause of the fires.
We now have the ridiculous situation of wetlands and refugia actually burning. Make no mistake - this exact same process is already in play in Western North America, and Britain too as fires that should never have happened have burnt over recent years.
Chosun :gh: