SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- Australians should be ready for "compounding" overlapping crises as they face more frequent, costly and severe climate change-worsened disasters, an inquiry into the nation's recent historic bushfires warned Friday.

Following devastating 2019-2020 blazes that killed 33 people and burned an area the size of the United Kingdom or Ghana, a Royal Commission told Australians "what was unprecedented is now our future."

Predicting a future in which disasters "will regrettably be more frequent and more severe", the commission said: "We can also expect more concurrent and consecutive hazard events."

"In the last 12 months, there was drought, heatwaves and bushfires, followed by severe storms, flooding and a pandemic."



The report focused heavily on the impact of climate change in producing more extreme weather and noted: "Further global warming over the next two decades is inevitable."



But it stopped short of calling on the conservative government -- which has slow-pedalled countermeasures -- to address the underlying causes, leaving some experts disappointed.

"We have an overflowing bathtub of troubles," said La Trobe University ecologist Michael Clarke.


Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly played down the link between climate and the bushfires, and committed to keeping Australia as one of the world's leading exporters of coal and natural gas.

