Australia is no stranger to wildfires. The country's weather patterns create heat and dryness, which fuel occasional bushfires in a natural cycle. However, one that started last September continues to burn, and it may not be natural at all. So far, the fire has burned 7.3 million hectares (73,000 square kilometers) of land, killing at least 28 people and destroying more than 3,000 homes in the process, reported the Telegraph. Scientists say that man-made climate change has played a role in the fire's creation and duration.

"What we have here are fires that might have occurred anyway," Peter Gleick, a US climate scientist, told Time. "But the extent, the severity, and the intensity of these fires is far worse than it otherwise would have been without the fingerprints of climate change."

According to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, the country's temperatures have risen by more than one degree Celsius since 1920. The spring of 2019 was Australia's driest in 120 years. In December, the country saw its hottest day ever, with an average temperature of 41.9 °C.

Worse still, researchers at the UK Bureau of Meteorology believe that wildfires like this might become "normal conditions" in the future, according to the BBC. They looked at 57 research papers published since 2013, which examined the relationship between climate change and the risk of wildfires. They found that the link between the two has already been observed in many parts of the world, including the western US, Canada, southern Europe, and even Scandinavia and Siberia.

"These are impacts we are seeing for one degree of global climate change. The impact will get worse if we don't do what it takes to stabilize the world's climate," Corinne Le Quere, a professor from the University of East Anglia in the UK, told the BBC. "What we are seeing in Australia is not the 'new normal'. It's a transition to worse impacts."