21 August 2017, The Conversation, Dry winter primes Sydney Basin for early start of bushfire season. It might feel like the depths of winter, but Australian fire services are preparing for an early start to the bushfire season. Sydney has been covered with smoke from hazard reduction burns, and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service has forecast a “horrific” season. Predicting the severity of a bushfire season isn’t easy, and – much like the near-annual announcements of the “worst flu season on record” – repeated warnings can diminish their urgency. However, new modelling that combines Bureau of Meteorology data with NASA satellite imaging has found that record-setting July warmth and low rainfall have created conditions very similar to 2013, when highly destructive bushfires burned across NSW and Victoria. Crucially, this research has found we’re approaching a crucial dryness threshold, past which fires are historically far more dangerous.How to measure bushfire fuel On September 10, 2013 several bushfires in Sydney’s West caused havoc well before the official start of the bushfire season. These were a precursor to fires that destroyed more than 200 properties a month later. Warm, dry winter weather had dried out the fuels in Sydney’s forests and bush reserves beyond “normal” levels for the time of year. The timing and severity of those preseason fires were a reminder that the region’s forests are flammable all year round; they can burn whenever the fuel they contain dries out past a certain threshold. Read More here
Tag Archives: Bushfire
14 August 2017, ECOS, Mapping fire-prone areas before the fires. Two months after Portugal’s deadliest fire season in recent record, thousands of firefighters have again been deployed in the last few days to battle new wildfires. It’s a crisis Australia knows well from its own bushfire history which paints an equally bleak and devastating picture. Events such as Ash Wednesday in Victoria and South Australia in the 1980s, Black Saturday in Victoria in 2009 and the enduring 2001 Black Christmas in NSW, resulted in hundreds of lives lost and close to 5,000 homes destroyed. These are just three examples of a long list of major Australian bushfire events. As we head towards 2050, climate change is predicted to cause fire seasons to start earlier, end later and involve more frequent extremes of weather that support major loss events. More than ever before, planning and preparation is playing a significant role in mitigating major bushfires and their effects on lives, properties and infrastructure. Following a state-wide project that saw CSIRO develop mapping technology that identified bushfire prone areas in Queensland down to a 25 metre square area, our researchers have now stepped onto the international stage by mapping regions all over the world that have conditions susceptible to fire events. This latest global tool is a valuable resource for hazard analysts, financers, developers and even the general public, seeking bushfire information online. Read More here
12 August 2017, New York Times, Portugal Forest Fires Worsen, Fed by Poor Choices and Inaction. When Portugal’s deadliest wildfire killed more than 60 people in June not far from the hamlet where Daniel Muralha lives, it was just the pensioner’s latest brush with death. 2003, Mr. Muralha, 77, narrowly survived a huge forest fire that engulfed his house. In 2015, a fire destroyed his field. And this July, he watched anxiously as fire burned the trees above his property. fires are getting worse and worse, which means this place is going to become a desert,” he said. “I’m too old to move elsewhere, but more people, of course, decide to leave after every fire.” What he describes is an increasingly urgent problem for his country. Hotter, drier summers are setting off more forest fires, which are accelerating a decades-old migration from rural areas, leaving lands untended. That, in turn, helps fuel new and more intense fires that spread and burn even faster. deadly spiral, forestry experts and environmentalists say, has been worsened by political inaction, a history of poor land management and the prioritizing of firefighting over fire prevention, even in the face of more frequent tragedies. But Portugal has become a particularly stark case of what the future may hold if changes to land, climate and economies go mismanaged. The deaths in June provoked a fresh round of soul-searching and spurred an investigation, still continuing, into how and why the wildfire engulfed Pedrógão Grande, about 10 miles from where Mr. Muralha lives, close to Oleiros. Oleiros and its environs are a prime example of the changes to the landscape that have rendered Portugal ever more vulnerable to fire. Read More here
28 July 2017, Climate Central, Wildfire Season Is Scorching the West. The West is ablaze as the summer wildfire season has gotten off to an intense start. More than 37,000 fires have burned more than 5.2 million acres nationally since the beginning of the year, with 47 large fires burning across nine states as of Friday. The relatively early activity is quickly becoming the norm, with rising temperatures making the fire season longer than it used to be. The warming fueled by greenhouse gases is also helping to create more and larger fires as it dries out more vegetation that acts as fuel for fires. This new fire situation means that western states need to be begin to rethink how they prepare for and combat fires, as well as how fire-prone land is developed. Five large fires (those of 1,000 acres or more) are currently raging across California, the largest of which is the Detwiler fire near Yosemite National Park, which has burned more than 80,000 acres since it ignited on July 16. That fire is now 75 percent contained, but it destroyed dozens of buildings, including 63 homes. Oregon has seven large fires burning, while Nevada has six and Idaho five.Montana currently has the most large fires of any state, with 14, including the massive Lodgepole Complex fire (a series of smaller fires that merged into one), which has burned more than 270,000 acres in the eastern portion of the state. That fire is also well-contained, but has burned through tens of thousands of acres of range land, displacing thousands of cattle and burning several structures. An intense drought there has rapidly cured the grasses that have fueled the fires. Scorching temperatures and dry conditions in recent weeks have helped fuel these fires across the region, which have burned 2 million more acres than at this point in last year’s wildfire season. Read More here