heat wave – Page 23 – Desdemona Despair

A boy cradles the body of dead endangered Brush-tailed rock-wallaby, found near a muddy puddle of water after a bushfire in Gosford, New South Wales, Australia, on 6 January 2020. The boy asked his father, Tim Faulkner, “They’re all dying aren’t they Dad?” Faulkner told him it was his job to save the world. Photo: Tim Faulkner / Facebook

January 13, 2020

Estimated number of animals killed in Australia bushfires rises to more than one billion – “Events like this may well hasten the extinction process for a range of species”

8 January 2020 (University of Sydney) – Professor Chris Dickman has revised his estimate of the number of animals killed in bushfires in NSW to more than 800 million animals, with a national impact of more than one billion animals. Several weeks ago Professor Dickman, from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Science, estimated that 480 […]

As many fires are still burning in Australia, a regular GLOBE Observer (Glenn Evans in Coogee, New South Wales, about 10 km/6 miles southeast of Sydney), has been taking consistent clouds observations from the same location over the last few weeks, sometimes multiple observations on the same day. In this short video, you can see a compilation of their ground observations in December 2019, facing west and south alongside satellite imagery from the same day taken by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. Notice the sky coloration when heavy smoke plumes are visible in the satellite image, as well as the days when there is both haze and other types of clouds in the sky. Video: NASA GLOBE Observer

January 13, 2020

A megafire measuring 1.5 million acres forms in Australia as bushfires merge – “It is too late to leave”

By Andrew Freedman 10 January 2020 (The Washington Post) – Australia’s bushfire crisis worsened Thursday night into Friday as hot, dry and windy conditions redeveloped across the country’s hard-hit southeast, causing two large blazes to merge into one. The new “megafire” measures about 1.5 million acres, about the size of the state of Delaware or […]

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

January 9, 2020

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 […]

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

January 7, 2020

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 […]

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

January 6, 2020

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

January 5, 2020

“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

January 4, 2020

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

January 4, 2020

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 […]

Map of daily average temperatures across Australia on 3 January 2020. It was the hottest ever day recorded in Greater Sydney Penrith was hottest place on Earth. The BOM recorded a maximum temperature of 48.9C at 3pm. The previous record of 47.3C was set in January 2018 Graphic: BOM / Prof. Ray Wills

January 4, 2020

Australia heatwave: Canberra and Penrith smash temperature records that stood for 80 years

4 January 2020 (Australian Associated Press) – Canberra and the outer western Sydney suburb of Penrith have broken temperature records that have stood for 80 years. The mercury climbed to 48.9°C [120°F] in Penrith and 43.6°C in Canberra on Saturday afternoon, the hottest temperatures recorded in those areas. The Canberra mark later rose above 44°C […]

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

January 3, 2020

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 […]