Australia Faces Elevated Bushfire Risk This Spring as El Niño and Dry Fuels Converge
Australia's peak fire and emergency services body has forecast heightened bushfire risk across large parts of the Northern Territory, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, and South Australia for spring 2026, as a strengthening El Niño compounds dry conditions in the east and above-average fuel loads in the centre and north.
The Australian and New Zealand Council for Fire and Emergency Services (AFAC) published its national seasonal bushfire outlook on 19 August 2026, identifying two distinct risk drivers working in tandem. AFAC chief executive Rob Webb said the outlook was driven by dry conditions in the country's east and increased fuel loads — the amount of combustible vegetation available to burn — through parts of central and northern Australia (The Guardian).
El Niño: The Climate Engine Behind the Risk
The El Niño–Southern Oscillation, one of Australia's strongest climate drivers, is a natural cycle in Pacific Ocean temperatures, winds, and cloud patterns (Bureau of Meteorology). Think of it as a pendulum: during an El Niño phase, warmer-than-usual water in the central and eastern Pacific shifts weather patterns worldwide. For Australia, El Niño typically brings reduced rainfall, warmer temperatures, a shift in temperature extremes, increased frost risk, reduced tropical cyclone numbers, and a later monsoon onset.
The Bureau of Meteorology's Niño3.4 index — a key measure of sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific — registered +2.20°C for the week ending 9 August 2026, well above the El Niño threshold of +0.80°C (Bureau of Meteorology). The Bureau has discontinued its ENSO Outlook alert system, though its broader outlook for winter and spring 2026 indicates rainfall is likely to be below average across parts of southern and eastern Australia, with temperatures likely to be above average across the continent (Bureau of Meteorology).
Northern Territory: The Widest Risk Zone
The Northern Territory faces the most geographically extensive elevated risk. Fire authorities warned that most of the territory south of Timber Creek and Borroloola faces heightened fire danger throughout spring, following intense rainfall and flooding earlier in 2026. Andrew Warton, commissioner of Fire and Emergency Services NT, said the wet season had driven above-average vegetation growth, particularly in the Barkly and southern regions (The Guardian).
The logic is straightforward: heavy rain grows grass and shrubs, then dry heat cures them into fuel. Alex Vaughan of the Arid Land Environment Centre described the landscape as a "tinderbox ready to burn," pointing to more intense rainfall followed by accelerated drying. Vaughan also identified "dangerous and fire-promoting buffel grass," an introduced species originally planted for pasture improvement that now dominates large areas of inland Australia, as compounding the threat (The Guardian). Gamba grass, another introduced species, causes very high fuel loads resulting in intensive fires that destroy native plant communities and pose a threat to lives and property in the NT (NT Government).
New South Wales and Queensland: Dry Soils, Regrowing Fuel
In New South Wales, low soil moisture has elevated fire risk for parts of the state and south-east Queensland. The northern tablelands including Armidale face heightened bushfire risk through spring, along with a small area of the far south coast around Bega. Ben Millington, deputy commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, said areas facing higher risk include places affected by the 2019–20 Black Summer fires. Those areas have regrown, Millington said, and their fuel loads are now able to carry fire once again (The Guardian).
Victoria and Tasmania: A Warm, Dry Spring Ahead
Below average rainfall has also increased fire danger for north-east and eastern Tasmania and parts of Victoria, including the East Gippsland region, the far south-west, the Surf Coast, and the area west of Geelong to the southern Wombat Forest. AFAC said Victoria faced one of its warmest and driest spring outlooks in some time (The Guardian). The AFAC autumn 2026 outlook had already identified heightened bushfire risk in NSW, Victoria, and Western Australia (AFAC).
Western Australia and South Australia: Expanding Risk
In Western Australia, the spring 2026 outlook identifies an increased chance of bushfire in the Cape Range, Wooramel, Western Murchison, Geraldton Hills, Yalgoo, Western Mallee, and Fitzgerald regions. This follows a winter 2026 outlook that placed fire risk mostly at average levels, with increased risk confined to parts of Dampierland, the northern Great Sandy Desert, and the Ord (AFAC). In northern South Australia, abundant grassland was described as "nearly ready to burn" (The Guardian).
How Authorities Respond
The institutional response architecture varies by jurisdiction. Bushfires NT and the NT Fire and Rescue Service declare the fire danger period, and all landholders within a declared NT fire danger area must have a permit to burn (NT Government). SecureNT provides emergency alerts and warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology, NTFRS, and other agencies (SecureNT).
The NSW Rural Fire Service operates a five-band Fire Danger Rating System (No rating, Moderate, High, Extreme, and a highest tier), describing the potential level of danger should a bushfire start (NSW RFS). Queensland Fire and Emergency Services publishes Fire Danger Ratings and a postcode checker that maps bushfire potential by suburb, considering terrain, vegetation, and elevated fire danger conditions (QFES). QFES also publishes information on scheduled hazard reduction burns — controlled fires lit deliberately to reduce fuel loads — across Queensland (QFES).
AFAC publishes a Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for each season and year on its website at afac.com.au (AFAC). The spring 2023 outlook had identified increased bushfire risk for large areas of the NT, Queensland, and NSW (AFAC), while the spring 2025 outlook had flagged heightened risk for the Dampier Peninsula, Derby Coast, the Central Kimberley, and the Little Sandy Desert in Western Australia (AFAC).
The Broader Pattern
The broader pattern warrants attention. The spring 2026 outlook joins a sequence of seasonal forecasts in which El Niño conditions and invasive grass species are converging to extend the geographic footprint of bushfire risk into areas not traditionally associated with severe fire seasons, particularly the NT's Barkly and southern interior. The regeneration of fuel loads in Black Summer-affected areas of NSW, occurring within roughly six years of those fires, raises questions about whether post-fire recovery intervals are compressing under conditions of higher temperature and reduced rainfall. Queensland's cyclone season, which officially runs from 1 November to 30 April (QFES), adds a secondary hazard layer that could interact with the fire outlook as spring transitions to summer, though cyclone activity during El Niño years is typically reduced.
What remains consistent across jurisdictions is the reliance on seasonal forecasting, permit-based burning regimes, and real-time alert infrastructure as the primary mitigation tools available to fire agencies. The El Niño signal, as the Bureau of Meteorology's Niño3.4 reading confirms, is now firmly established. How decisively that translates into actual fire activity will depend on ignition sources, wind patterns, and the timing of any spring rainfall events that the current outlook does not anticipate.
