Climate change has role in Australia fires

"It wrapped the whole country in a sheet of flame," he said.

Even with another three months to go before the end of the bushfire season, the scale of the area burned represents a full 11 percent of Australia's habitable margins.

"Apart from sheer size, the current fires were already unprecedented because of timing. Every major fire since European settlement has peaked in the summer months, early February, whereas these fires started in spring," Read said.

A month ago, Australia was confronted for the first time with the concept of the 'megafire'－a term coined in 2005 to describe unsettling changes in wildfire behavior in the United States.

It was inspired by a fire that burned for 25 days and consumed 56,000 hectares. But Australia's current fires dwarf that. They have burned for 130 days and destroyed an area much larger.

"This is uncharted territory. They began earlier than ever before, with a size and ferocity historically constrained to the first week of February. They promise to outburn the largest fires in Australian history," Read said.

He disagreed with claims by Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack. McCormack asserted the scale of these fires was due to "dry lightning strikes, self-combusting manure" or child firelighters "running around like Little Lucifers".

While these are all ignition sources, Read said "there are no good reasons for arson to increase much above last year－and dry lightning itself is a consequence, not an initial cause, of a large megafire".

Ignition cannot predict fire size, he said. "What can predict size is climate as well as fuel."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made a 12-fold increase in funding for fuel reduction burns. But Read said, "Efforts on all fronts are needed.

"What he doesn't want to do is have to admit anything that threatens one of our biggest exports－coal. This would admit his own government's culpability."