Australia Wildfires Really Are A Global Big Deal

Firefighters in a losing battle with the Australian bushfires.

I know that for the past couple months, I keep returning to the extreme wildfires in Australia, which incredibly, keep getting worse and worse.

In fact, there's a lot of media reports and weather forecasts that indicate Australia will have the worst part of the crisis yet by Saturday, as a combination of near record heat, continued drought and erratic winds will stir up the giant fires even more. 

Mass evacuations continue amid a rising death toll, widespread destruction, and a section of Australia burned that is at least as big as Belgium. Dramatic videos are at the bottom of this post.

The real reason I keep bringing the fires up is the obvious situation that this is a huge new story.  It also is, if you'll forgive my oxymoron, a microcosm of the global climate crisis writ large

Yes, yes, I know the bushfire crisis in Australia is not 100 percent caused by climate change, as some of the more strident activists would have it.

Wildfires have always happened in Australia,  pretty much every summer. This year, a  natural cycle that has brought drought to Australia, which has exacerbated the  fire situation.  On top of that, more and more people have moved to the so-called urban-wildland interface, which has made for an increasing number of potential human fire victims.

Apocalyptic scene of a mother taking her two sons
(under the blankets) out in a boat on a lake to
escape the Australian bushfires. Photo by
Allison Marion.

But there's no question that climate change has tipped the scale to make what would have been a terrible fire season absolutely catastrophic. It you make a climate a little drier, a little hotter and a little windier, in this case through climate change, you get something like the current Australian cataclysm.

We've seen this type of thing all over the world, although Australia is among the most devastating examples. I suspect the terrible wildfires in California in 2017 and 2018 were made much worse by climate change.

On the opposite extreme, epic floods, like the Hurricane Harvey inundation of Houston and much of the rest of East Texas back in 2017, likely would not have been as bad if climate change had been absent.

Australia's current summer of fire also highlights the current state of climate denial among the world's so-called leaders.

The escalation in "natural" disasters - ones that might have happened anyway but in recent years were made worse by climate change - coincides with a global rise in right wing populist "leaders."

For some reason, some, but not all of these right wingers, like Donald Trump in the United States, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, and yes, Australia's Scott Morrison, are strident climate deniers, or at least, they don't give a damn about it.

Trump, Bolsonaro and Morrison have all labeled climate change as "fake news."

Bolsonaro went as far to falsely accuse climate activists, including Leonardo DiCaprio, of setting or  having people set Amazon forest fires last year to boost their political agenda  While Morrison has certainly not copied Bolsonaro, his poltical supporters have.

I notice on Twitter, where fake news really thrives, a lot of climate deniers have retweeted patently false "news" that 200 climate activists started the Australian fires to advance their agenda.

Australians awaiting rescue from a seaside beach as bushfires
close in on them.

As always these awful deniers take something that has a grain of truth and then totally falsify what's really going on.  It's true that a lot of the Australian fires were set by humans, either accidentally or on purpose. 

These obviously weren't climate activists setting this blazes. It was stupid people doing some outdoor burning despite all advice against it, or pyromaniacs who get their jollies out of inflicting immense pain and suffering by starting wildfires.

Australia's Morrison acknowledges the existence of climate change, but says the current conflagration isn't caused by it.  And he supports and encourages the nation's coal industry, and resists calls to downsize that industry.

So, the fires continue. The death toll will mount, more destruction will happen, and then when the fires are out, or more likely before then, we'll move on to our next climate-related disaster.

Some videos:

Here a firetruck is overrun by the fire front in New South Wales. Firefighters in the video try desperately to get under blankets to protect themselves from the intense heat. Happy spoiler: They survived



A woman attached a GoPro to her forehead as she battled to save her home from the fires:



This is Mallacoota, as residents were forced to flee to the beach, a risk of having to dive into the ocean to escape the flames. The blood red sky and the darkness in the video were taken during the day, a testimony to how scary and intense this crisis was and is:



Here's some aerial views to give you just a little taste of how extensive these wildfires are:



To give you an idea of how serious this is, Australian media have begun calling this, accurately, a humanitarian crisis. That's the kind of phrase you hear when a Third World country is having a catastrophe, not an advanced nation like Australia. Here's the video that shows this:

Hate The Cold? Go To Australia. But You Won't Like The Heat There

UPDATE FEB 3, 2019

Temperature departure from normal in Celcius
for Australia, Januayr 2019. It was that
nation's hottes month on record, with only
isolated areas reporting cooler than nornal'
conditions Australia is about the size
of the United States Lower 48. 

Australia indeed had its hottest month on record. Making all this worse, it followed the hottest December on record.

Plus, there's no major signs that the heat will break anytime soon.

It is a miserable summer Down Under. ABC News (Australia's ABC, not the U.S.) gives us some hot-to-the-touch statistics:

The mean temperature for the country as a whole exceeded 30 degree Celcius (86 degrees F) for the first time in history.

Australia also had its  hottest overnight "low" temperature, which was 36.6 degrees Celcius, or 98 degrees F.  Several cities had their all-time hottest day on record during January.

The city of Canberra had four consecutive days of temperatures at 40 C  (104 degrees F) or above, the first time in history that's happened.

Even worse, a community called Birdsville in the state of Queensland had ten consecutive days with high temperatures of 45 degrees C (113 degrees F) or more.

I'm sure there's a lot of people in Australia, really, really looking forward to the Southern Hemisphere autumn.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION 1/29/2019

It's been so hot in Adelaide, Australia that this wallaby sought refuge
in the shade at this home. The homeowner came outside every hour
to dump cool water on the wallaby to keep it from overheating.
Photo by Andrew Cornell

While we here in Vermont have spent a lot of time the past couple of months discussing snow and Arctic outbreaks, Down Under in Australia is having what looks like will be the hottest summer on record.

I mentioned Australian heat around New Year's Day, but it has gotten worse since then. Much worse.

Cities across most of Australia have reported record high or near record high temperatures all month. That's especially impressive since Australia is roughly as big as the continental United States.

According to the Category 6 blog, no fewer than 28 places in Australia had all-time record high tempertures last week. For instance, Adelaide hit 116 degrees.

Around Adelaide, many thousands of chickens died in the heat. The torrid weather also made hundreds or even thousands of bats fall dead out of the trees. They also succumbed to the roasting air.

One man said he left meat inside his car as the temperature inside rose to 140 degrees. He said after two hours, the meat was cooked enough to eat. 

There's a weather station on the coast of western Australia that hit 120 degrees last week. The thermometer that measured the temperature is only about 230 feet from the ocean. The high reading is the hottest temperature on record for anywhere in the world that close to an ocean.

The Guardian reports all kinds of records are falling. Ominously, many of these records are for high minimum temperatures. It's more dangerous during heat waves when it doesn't cool off at night.

That was the problem last July, when a record heat wave in Quebec killed dozens of people, in large part because of stifling nights. That same July heat wave killed at least four people in Vermont, where Burlington had its warmest minimum temperature on record  - 80 degrees

In Australia, it's even worse.   One morning earlier this month, the small community of Noona had a low of 96.6 degrees. By noon, it was 113 degrees.

In Melbourne Friday, it was a stifling 86 degrees before dawn, and it was up to 95 degrees by 8 a.m. says The Guardian.

Play had to be suspended at the Australian Open the other day because it was too hot to safely play tennis, officiate it, or even watch it.

Large bushfires have been burning in Tasmania because
of the record heat this summer in Australia

Alice Springs, in northern Australia had at least 14 consecutive days with temperatures of 107 or hotter. Nearby was the scene of one of the saddest consequences of the heat wave and drought.

Feral horses gathered at the Deep Hole reservoir for water, but it was so hot and dry the reservoir dried up, and 90 horses died.

Their bodies were found in a heap within the remaining mud at the bottom of the reservoir. More than 100 other horses are in such bad shape they will probably have to be euthanized.

With heat comes fire, and Australia is especially prone to dangerous wildfires. There's a lot of eucalpytus trees and forests in large parts of the country.  These trees burn explosively in wildfires, so as you can imagine these fires are particularly scary. Especially since many of these wildfire-prone areas are heavily populated.

Bush fires have been burning in Victoria and Tasmania, and some homes have burned.  Tasmania residents were told to be ready to flee, or if able, defend their homes from the flames.

There's no indication that the Australian heat will subside soon.

You wouldn't know it living in the United States, but most of the Earth is continuing to have very high temperatures. The only areas that are colder than normal currently are much of eastern Canada, much of central and eastern United States and parts of Siberia.

It will be interesting to find out how January's worldwide temperature will compare to normal. I bet it will be quite a bit toastier than normal, as has every month this decade. I don't think the deep chill in Minnesota is going to change the results much at all.