I had a great time at my first CLEX workshop a few weeks back in Brisbane - met some wonderful people for the first time/first time IRL. Here I am pretending to be an art savant during my lightning lecture...

Although for much of the globe, its the drying of fuels that leads to more burning (red shading here) - noisy signal though using this 19-year satellite data set.

Our analysis from last year shows the same thing - a wet year prior to the fire season typically leads to higher burned areas in northern Australia (red shading in this image). From www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It highlights the role of La Niña-driven rains that increase the fuel load, which then dries out. This year has the highest area burned since 2011, which was also just after La Niña.

We also looked at the kinds of weather patterns associated with these droughts.

El Niño and other climate modes of variability can affect how likely these droughts are, but this influence is region-specific and may not matter for the grid at-large. BUT – this is just the resource (solar radiation and wind speed) – many other factors at play.

These ‘droughts’ happen in at least 15 out of 36 Renewable Energy Zones on >50% of days. Winter is the most at-risk season, mostly due to lower solar resource. Renewable Energy Zone = region of high renewable energy potential.

✨New paper alert*✨ Cloudy, still days might sound mild, but they are bad for renewable energy! This new paper looks at how often Australia experiences compound cloudy, wind-less days. *less new if you read the pre-print. doi.org/10.1038/s416...

👋 Introducing myself to bsky: I'm a climate scientist! Follow me for any combination of the following: compound events, energy systems, fire weather and forecasting. Here's hoping for a return of the halcyon days of climate twitter.