Bushfire scientists call for Australia to set up national fire monitoring agency

Inconsistencies in how fires are measured across the states leads to confusion over how much of the country actually burned, experts say

A group of bushfire scientists have used an article in one of the world's leading scientific journals to call for Australia to establish a national agency to monitor the scale, severity and impacts of fires.

The eight scientists from Australia and Spain say inconsistencies in how the scale and severity of bushfires are measured across the states had led to confusion over how much of the country actually burned.