They were also far bigger than similar forest fires elsewhere globally in at least the past two decades.
"In terms of the mid-latitude forests,this was a phenomenal event,"said Ross Bradstock,head of the University of Wollongong's Centre of Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires,and an author of one of the papers.
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Two fires - the Gospers Mountain and Currowan fires - each burnt more than half a million hectares,a"quite extraordinary"outcome for blazes caused by a single ignition point,Professor Bradstock said.
The paper estimated that 21 per cent of Australia's so-called temperate broadleaf and mixed forests had been burnt. That proportion was most likely an under-estimation because the tally only counted losses to the end of January and excluded those in Queensland,South Australia and Tasmania.
By contrast,average annual burnt areas for other continental forests were"well below 5 per cent"over the past 20 years. Taking Asian and African tropical and sub-tropical dry broadleaf forests alone,median annual losses were 8-9 per cent and the largest event about 13 per cent - well short of Australia's big event.
However,identifying the link between climate change and Australia's fires remains complicated,other papers showed.