10 June 2020 The Conversation, It’s 12 months since the last bushfire season began, but don’t expect the same this year. Last season’s bushfires directly killed 34 people and devastated more than 8 million hectares of land along the south-eastern fringe of Australia. A further 445 people are estimated to have died from smoke-induced respiratory problems. The burned landscape may take decades to recover, if it recovers at all. While it’s become known colloquially as the Black Summer, last year’s fire season actually began in winter in parts of Queensland. The first fires were in June. So will the 2020 fire season kick off this month? And is last summer’s inferno what we should expect as a normal fire season? The answer to both questions is no. Let’s look at why. Last fire season First, let’s recap what led to last year’s early start to the fire season, and why the bushfires became so intense and extensive. The fires were so severe because they incorporated five energy sources. The most obvious is fuel: live and dead plant material. The other sources bushfires get their energy from include the terrain, weather, atmospheric instability and a lack of moisture in the environment such as in soil, timber in houses and large woody debris. Read more here
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25 May 2020 The Guardian, Australia’s severe bushfire season was predicted and will be repeated, inquiry told. Forecasts that turned out to be accurate were made available to governments and fire agencies in the middle of 2019. The fires that caused 33 deaths, destroyed more than 3,000 homes, and burned more than 10m hectares of bushland were accurately predicted by the Bureau of Meteorology and in line with predictions Australia’s peak scientific body laid down 30 years ago. And according to evidence given in the first day of public hearings in the royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements on Monday, fires of that scale will occur with greater frequency as the climate continues to heat. “This isn’t a one-off event that we’re looking at here,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate monitoring, Dr Karl Braganza, told the hearing. “Really since the Canberra 2003 fires, every jurisdiction in Australia has seen some really significant fire events that have challenged what we do to respond to them and have really challenged what we thought fire weather looked like preceding this period.” Read more here
20 April 2020, Climate Home News, Four more EU nations back a green post-coronavirus recovery. Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta join call by 13 other nations to put the European Green Deal at the heart of the economic response to … Continue reading →
7 April 2020, The Guardian, Great Barrier Reef’s third mass bleaching in five years the most widespread yet. Government’s chief marine scientist says he fears people will lose hope for the future of the reef but it is a clear … Continue reading →