Changing weather patterns, a warming climate and more people living in high-fire danger areas have experts warning simply doing more hazard reduction burns cannot prevent catastrophic bushfires from claiming lives and property.

They argue that while hazard reduction burns can help reduce the intensity of bushfires and protect houses, the dominant factor in creating extreme fires is the sort of weather that fanned fires devastating coastal Victoria and NSW in recent weeks.

Dangerous bushfires are driven primarily by extreme weather. Credit:Wolter Peeters

"The biggest risk factor we have is the weather, and we’ve got to realise that because of climate change we will get extreme weather events more often, and when they occur there is very little we can do to stop catastrophic fires - except keep houses a long way from the bush," said Professor Ross Bradstock, the director of Wollongong University's Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires.

The most extreme fire weather occurs in NSW and Victoria when high and low pressure systems collide along the coast, sucking air from inland Australia through a narrow channel and creating strong, hot and dry winds.