Heatwaves are Australia's new normal. And they're going to get worse

Two weeks ago, south-eastern Australia baked through an intense heatwave. And this week, we're doing it again. If that feels like a pattern, it is.

We keep talking about heatwaves as if they are unusual events that interrupt “normal” Australian summers. But what we are living through now is the new normal: heat that arrives more often, lasts longer, pushes further south, and loads the dice for catastrophic fires.

Let's look at the numbers. In the current heatwave, parts of the south-east are flirting with conditions Australians rarely experienced last century. Temperatures are pushing close to 50°C, with records already falling and more under threat across South Australia, Victoria and western New South Wales. The Bureau of Meteorology’s own severe weather update has described the extreme heat, including 49°C in north-west Victoria and parts of South Australia heading towards 50°C later in the week.

That's not “a bit hot”. That's heat with consequences: for human bodies, for hospitals, for infrastructure, for wildlife, for the reliability of power, and for the speed and ferocity of bushfires.

The real story is frequency

It's tempting to fixate on the peak temperature, as if the danger is contained in one extreme day. The bigger shift is how often these events are arriving. The first heatwave in early January, the one we thought we had “just endured”, has already been analysed by World Weather Attribution, a respected international collaboration that rapidly assesses the influence of human-caused climate change on extreme weather. Their conclusion was stark: climate change made that heatwave about five times more likely than it would have been in a world without the current level of warming.

Before human-caused warming, heat like we're experiencing now was rare, roughly four times a century. Now, the same kind of events are occurring much more regularly. And the current heat waves are occurring with a weak La Niña in the background, which normally dampens heat extremes.

Let that sink in. A heatwave that once belonged to the category of “exceptional” is now something we should expect repeatedly. It's not bad luck. It's the new climate expressing itself.

Why this particular heat is so punishing

There's a reason this current event feels relentless. The ABC has explained it as a “heat dome”: a slow-moving, high-pressure system that forces air downward, heating it rapidly as it compresses and preventing relief from arriving. This pattern is allowing severe heat to persist across inland areas for days on end.

And this is the other key change: duration. A single hot day is dangerous. A week of extreme heat is destabilising. It degrades sleep, dries out landscapes, burns crops, increases baseline stress on the heart and lungs, and sets the stage for fires that move faster and burn hotter. And it's not only the bush that pays. Cities do too. Western Sydney, western Melbourne, inland regional centres, and poorer suburbs with less tree cover and poorer-quality housing are becoming heat traps. The risks are not evenly shared.

Heat is Australia’s deadliest natural hazard, and we still treat it like background noise

In Australia, we've built a culture of stoicism around heat. We joke about it. We tell each other to drink water and get on with it. But heatwaves kill. Hundreds of Aussies die in heat-related events every year with heatwaves responsible for more deaths than bushfires, cyclones and floods combined. They overwhelm emergency departments. They worsen heart disease, kidney disease, respiratory illness, and mental health. They're already placing acute pressure on health systems and disproportionately affecting the elderly, people in overheated buildings without cooling, outdoor workers, and those with pre-existing conditions. That's not future tense. That is now.

What Australia should do, starting immediately

If heatwaves are the new normal, then heat resilience must become core business for every level of government. We need two things at once.

First: serious emissions reduction, because every fraction of a degree matters. And that means ending the Albanese Government's coal and gas expansionism among other things! And second: adaptation that treats heat like the national and human security risk it is. Australia needs stronger building standards for thermal performance, rapid urban greening, cool roofs and shaded streets, reliable emergency cooling centres, clear workplace rules for extreme heat, and targeted support for the people most at risk.

If we keep drifting, we will normalise the abnormal. We will accept that two severe heatwaves in a month is just “summer”. We will treat near 50°C forecasts as weather chatter. And we will keep being surprised by the predictable.

Heatwaves are the new normal. They are going to get worse. The only remaining question is whether we respond like a country that understands what's happening, or like a country that keeps pretending this is just another hot spell that will pass.

Extreme heat forecast for Tuesday 27 January - ABC.