In the wake of last week's deadly Esperance fires, the Climate Council says WA's South West is facing a "very high bushfire risk" for the coming summer, thanks to more intense heat waves and severe droughts.
The Climate Council's seventh report into bushfire conditions showed years of low rainfall in WA has lead to increasingly dry forests and grasslands with "above normal fire potential".
Climate Councilor Professor Lesley Hughes said the climate that WA is experiencing now is at a result of the greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere over the past few decades.
"The bushfire outlooks that indicates above normal bushfire conditions for about a third of WA", she said.
"We've just had the hottest October on record, and the third driest September on record.
"What we're really saying in the report is Australia is already a very fire prone country, and when you add the warming conditions to that […] you can think of it as loading the dice for bushfires.
"The point is we need to be ready for these conditions. Our aim in putting out this report is to make the link between bushfires and climate trends, but also to equip emergency services with the arguments they need to push for the necessary resources."
The report didn't just hold warnings for Australia, with the United States also coming under bushfire threat as global temperatures increased.
The length of fire seasons globally has also increased by 19 per cent since 1978.
According to the report longer bushfire seasons that overlapped between Australia and the US could put increasing demands on the limited reserves of firefighting aircraft which are leased between the two countries.
Personnel would also become a problem, with the number of professional firefighters needing to double by 2030 to meet demand.
The report stated Australia needed to cut emissions more rapidly, joining global efforts to stabilise the world's climate.
"Australia's emissions reduction target of 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 is not sufficient to protect Australians from worsening bushfires and extreme weather events," the report said.
Professor Hughes said the increasing number of fires could also tip the ecological balance between species in the environment.
"It's not correct to say that fire destroys bushland - it doesn't destroy bushland, it's a major disturbance to bushland and affects what grows back there," she said.
"If the fire kills the adult plant, then comes back too quickly, you can actually wipe out species from the local area because the plants don't have time to reproduce. That's just one of the reasons why fire is a major driver of ecological change.
"Fires in the short term can have a big impact in water quality in catchments. As you take off the vegetation and then get rain there's a lot more runoff and erosion. The catchments also get full of dirt and soot.
"And of course when you have fires like we did in Esperance, then the animals just can't outrun that."
Read more at WA Today.
