The Short Version

Australia has warmed by roughly 1.5°C since national records began in 1910, and most of that warming has happened since 1950. That's the global trend, but it lands harder here — Australia is already hot, already dry, and already prone to extremes, so the same amount of global warming produces more dramatic local consequences than it does in cooler, wetter countries.

Why Here, Specifically

Australia sits in a part of the world heavily influenced by two climate systems — El Niño and La Niña — that swing rainfall and temperature between extremes even without any warming trend layered on top. Add rising baseline temperatures to naturally dry El Niño years, and you get exactly what the last two decades have delivered: record-breaking heatwaves, extended droughts, and fire seasons that start earlier and finish later.

IT'S NOT ONE BAD YEAR. IT'S THE SAME TREND LINE, MEASURED AGAIN, STILL GOING UP.

The Bit Nobody Wants to Say Plainly

None of this is contested science. It's measured, published, and repeated by the Bureau of Meteorology every year in the same dry, procedural language. The gap isn't in the data. It's between the data and what gets done about it — which is the entire subject of this series.

More in the Burnt series: The Black Summer Bushfires: A Timeline · Coal, Politics and the Great Australian Contradiction · The Insurance Crisis · Drought, Flood, Repeat · What Burnt Actually Means

Related: Burnt graphic tees · The Bush graphic tees