The “Devil face” seen in smoke from the east Gippsland bushfire in New South Wales, Australia, 3 January 2020. Photo: Channel 7 News Melbourne

We are seeing the very worst of our scientific predictions come to pass in these bushfires – “The thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by today’s standards will seem sedate in the future”

By Joëlle Gergis 2 January 2020 (The Guardian) – I had goosebumps watching surreal footage of the mass evacuation of people stranded on the south-east Australian coast. Once again, catastrophic bushfire conditions are bearing down on communities during increasingly horrific summers in Australia. It has been an unprecedented continuation of the horrendous bushfires that started […]

Glaciers in New Zealand have turned a caramel colour from bushfire ash blown across from Australia, 1 January 2020. Photo: Fabulousmonster @Rachelhatesit / Twitter

New Zealand glaciers turn brown from Australian bushfires’ smoke, ash and dust – May increase glacier melt in 2020 by 30 percent

By Eleanor Ainge Roy 1 January 2020 WANAKA (The Guardian) – Snow and glaciers in New Zealand have turned brown after being exposed to dust from the Australian bushfires, with one expert saying the incident could increase glacier melt this season by as much as 30 percent. On Wednesday many parts of the South Island woke […]

Global surface temperature anomalies, 1880-2019, compared with the 1880-1899 average. The year 2019 was the second warmest year on record, capping the warmest decade since measurements began. Data: Gavin Schmidt / NASA GISTEMP. Graphic: InsideClimate

2010-2019: Earth’s hottest decade on record marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires – “The climate of the 20th Century is gone. We’re in a new neighborhood.”

By Bob Berwyn 19 December 2019 (InsideClimate News) – Deadly heat waves, wildfires and widespread flooding punctuated a decade of climate extremes that, by many scientific accounts, show global warming kicking into overdrive. As the year drew to a close, scientists were confidently saying 2019 was Earth’s second-warmest recorded year on record, capping the warmest […]

A helicopter carries water through smoky skies as it flies near the town of Bilpin, located west of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, on Sunday, 29 December 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

Global apathy toward the fires in Australia is a scary portent for the future

By David Wallace-Wells 31 December 2019 (New York magazine) – Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in which the public seemed finally to wake up to the dramatic threat from global warming, a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two […]

Kangaroos flee bushfires in Monaro, New South Wales, 30 December 2019. Photo: Mitchell Lyons / 7 News / News.com.au

Nearly 500 million animals killed in Australia bushfires since September 2019 – 30 percent of koalas incinerated by “unfightable” fires in New South Wales – Thousands of fire-injured sheep shot on Kangaroo Island

By Marnie O’Neill 1 January 2020 (News.com.au) – There are concerns that entire species of plants and animals may have been wiped out by bushfires following estimations that 480 million animals may die as a result of the crisis. Ecologists from the University of Sydney estimate almost half a billion mammals, birds and reptiles may […]

Map centered on the Hotham and Bogong High Plains area in the Victorian Alps showing the extent of the fires from the 1970-2000 period to early January 2020. Graphic: Dr Tom Fairman / Twitter

“Sub-alpine savannas” replace forests in the Victorian Alps as global warming drives fire frequency

5 January 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – Dr. Tom Fairman, forest scientist at the Victoria Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning has posted a series of burn maps for the Victorian Alps showing the extent of bushfires from the 1970-2000 period to 5 January 2020. The maps reveal how much of the forest has been […]

Smoke from bushfires in Australia turns the sky red in Merimbula at 7am, 4 January 2020. Photo: Tegan George / Network 10

Total evacuation of Eden ordered as bushfires close in – “There is no safe place here”

By Christopher Knaus 4 January 2020 (The Guardian) – The situation is deteriorating in Eden on the Far South Coast. A bushfire moved quickly up from the NSW-Victorian border last night, as the southerly change moved up the coast and turned fires northward. The fire, dubbed the “border fire”, burnt last night from the Victorian […]

The afternoon sky glows red from bushfires in the area around the town of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales on 31 December 2019. Photo: Saeed Khan / AFP / Getty Images

Premier of New South Wales: “We can’t pretend this is something we have experienced before. It’s not.”

4 January 2019 (The Guardian) – The Premier of New South Wales, Gladys Berejiklian, gets very real here, as she talks about exactly what the state is facing: “We can’t pretend our state is in charted territory. “The extent of this bushfire season in living memory, and many experts have been around much longer,than I […]

A kangaroo rushes past a burning house on 31 December 2019 in Conjola, on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. Photo: Matthew Abbott / The New York Times / Redux / Eyevine

Australia authorities plead for last-ditch evacuation, with terrible fire conditions ahead

By Ben Smee 3 January 2020 (The Guardian) – Australian authorities have made a final plea for people to flee bushfire-affected areas in three states before the onset of extreme conditions so dangerous that firefighters may be unable to defend entire towns. On Friday, authorities in New South Wales urged people still in a 14,000 […]

Aerial view of smoke rising from a bushfire burning at East Gippsland, Victoria, 2 January 2020. Photo: EPA / BBC News

Tens of thousands stranded while attempting to flee Australia fires – Cashless economy collapses as ATMs fail, supermarket looted – “We have no capacity to contain these fires”

By Ben Smee and Luke Henriques-Gomes 2 January 2020 (The Guardian) – Tens of thousands of people remained stranded on Thursday evening while attempting to flee bushfire-ravaged areas of the south-east Australian coast – having earlier been urged to leave before the return of extreme and dangerous weather conditions. The mass evacuation of communities in […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial